James 1994 Resistance and Integration

CA M BRID G E L A TIN AM ERICA N STUDIES
GENERAL EDITOR
SIMON COLLIER
ADVISORY COMMITTEE
MARVIN BERNSTEIN, MALCOLM DEAS
CLARK W. REYNOLDS, ARTURO VALENZUELA
64
RESISTANCE A N D
IN T E G R A T IO N
For my mother, Chris Maddison,
and father, Morgan James,
with love and gratitude
In memory of Bryn Morgan,

Welsh miner, 1908-79
and Daniel Hopen,

disappeared in Argentina,
August 1976
RESISTANCE AND
INTEGRATION
PER Ö N ISM A N D TH E A R G EN TIN E
W O R K IN G CLASS, 1946-1976
D A N IE L JAM ES
Assistant Professor, Department of History, Yale University
CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2IRP
40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA
10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia
© Cambridge University Press 1988
First published 1988

First paperback edition 1993
Printed in the United States of America
Library o f Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
A catolog record fo r this book is available fro m the British Library.
ISBN 0-521-34635-5 hardback

ISBN 0-521-46682-2 paperback
Contents
Acknowledgements page vii
Introduction i
Part One The background 5

1 Peronism and the working class, 1943-5 5 7
P art Two The Peronist Resistance, 1955-8 41

2 The survival of Peronism: resistance in
the factories 43
3 Commandos and unions: the emergence of
the new Peronist union leadership 72
4 Ideology and consciousness in the
Peronist Resistance 88
Part Three Frondizi and integration: temptation and

disenchantment, 195 8-62 1o 1
5 Resistance and defeat: the impact on leaders,
activists and rank and hie 103
6 The corollary of institutional pragmatism:
activists, commandos and elections 13 5
Part Four The Vandor era, 1962-^ 159

7 The burocracia sindical: power and politics
in Peronist unions 161
8 Ideology and politics in Peronist unions:
different currents within the movement 187
v
VI Contents
Part Five Workers and the Revolution Argentina:
from Ongania to the retu rn of Perön, 1966-73 213
9 The Peronist union leaders under siege:
new actors and new challenges *15
10 Conclusion 249
Notes 265
Select bibliography 287
Index 295
Acknowledgements
The research on which this book is based was financed through grants
from the following bodies: Social Science Research Council (Great Bri
tain), Foreign Area Fellowship Program (New York), and the Univer
sity of Cambridge junior fellows travel fund. I would like to express
my appreciation to these bodies for their support.
The intellectual and personal debts that go into any work of this type
are bound to be enormous. Professor John Lynch and Richard
Moseley-Williams first planted the seeds of my interest in Argentine
history and were sympathetic and stimulating teachers. I have studied
Argentina and its labour movement for over fifteen years and in the
course of that time I have argued and discussed the history and the pres
ent of the Argentine working class with many people. Many of the
views and opinions expressed here are borrowings, hybrids, adapta
tions which have emerged from those discussions. Intellectual orig
inality is, it seems to me, an extremely rare commodity and for my part
I willingly thank the following friends and colleagues for their part in
this book. I can only hope that such an association does not displease
them and that they recognise, in at least a partial way, the essence of
shared ideas and discussions.
I must first and foremost thank my friend Alberto Belloni, who will
ingly spent many hours and days discussing labour history and sharing
his own experiences with a naive foreigner. Much of any understanding
I have of the passion, the ambiguity and the tragedy of the Argentine
working-class history I owe to him. In the many years that followed
our first meeting he has, in the most trying of personal circumstances,
always been willing to continue to share his thoughts, his anger, his
compassion and his overwhelming intellectual curiosity. Another
Argentine friend, Alberto Ferrari, placed his deep knowledge of Argen
tine politics and society at my disposal. I have also benefited from
many discussions with Juan Carlos Torre, who consistently provoked
vii
viii Acknowledgements
me and made me question commonplaces about Argentine workers and
their unions. These and other Argentine friends always managed to
suppress their instinctive scepticism about that intrinsically condes
cending and improbable species - the academic Latin Americanist. For
their good manners and good humour I thank them.
Judith Evans was a good friend and good adviser, who has always
shared her passion for things Argentine. My colleague and friend
Emilia Viotti da Costa has been a consistent source of encouragement
and good editorial advice. More than that, though, she has shared her
unflagging intellectual curiosity with me and provoked me to justify
and rethink many, many assumptions. Graduate students at Yale have
also provided me with a stimulating intellectual environment; in par
ticular Albert Vourvoulias, Romi Gandolfo and Jeff Gould all contrib
uted to this work. Walter Little offered sound and generous advice. The
usual caveats, of course, apply in that none of the above are responsible
for the final product presented here.
Last, but in no sense least, my thanks to Lynn Di Pietro for her
patience and above all for simply being there.
Introduction
Over the last forty years the Peronist union movement has been a cru
cial actor in the drama of modern Argentine history. It has been the
principal institutional channel for, and beneficiary of, the Argentine
working class’s allegiance to Perön as a person and Peronism as a
movement. A vital pillar of the Peronist regime from 1946 to 1955,
unions have remained the main mobilisers of the Peronist masses and
the union leadership has acted as the chief broker of this power in its
negotiations with other sectors of the Argentine polity, above all the
armed forces. Indeed, a dominant theme of contemporary Argentine
history has been the role of the union movement as the chief interlocu
tor between the armed forces and civil society; the fate of modern
Argentina has frequently seemed to hinge on the outcome of an uneasy
but ever present dialogue between generals and union bosses. The
power accruing to the union movement from this situation has been
enormous; frequently repressed, the unions have nevertheless pre
sented themselves to even the most hostile military governments as an
irreducible social and political force.
This book seeks, at a most basic level, to trace the development of
Peronism within the unions in the 1955-73 period. What was the re
lationship between union leaders and members? How valid is the popu
lar conception of union power which emphasises corruption, violence
and power politicking? What were the real sources of union, and more
particularly union leadership, power? By asking and trying to answer
these obvious but important questions we can hope to go beyond the
surface plausibility of popular images.
The book also addresses the wider issue of the relationship between
Peronism and the Argentine working class and the meaning of that re
lationship for workers in general and the trade unions in particular. Fre
quently, this issue has been approached from the perspective of more
general notions concerning populism. The result of this has been an em-
1
2 Introduction
phasis on the aberrant quality of working-class participation within
Peronism. Such participation has been treated as something of an his
torical conundrum requiring explanation, most usually in terms of
notions such as manipulation, passivity, cooptation, and not uncom
monly, irrationality. This work does not offer an all-embracing theory
of populism. Indeed, from the historian’s point of view I would sug
gest that part of the problem with many existing analyses has been the
level of abstraction at which they have operated. Macro-explanatory
frameworks have not been able to cope with the concrete questions and
exceptions they themselves have often suggested. The specificity of
concrete social movements and historical experience have escaped
through the broad mesh of such frameworks.
First and foremost, I have attempted to explore the historical experi
ence of Argentine workers in the decades following the overthrow of
Juan Perön in 1955. Within this general framework, two terrains of
analysis have interested me in particular: the Peronist union hierarchy
and its relationship with its rank and file, and the issue of Peronist
ideology and its impact on the working class. Considerable emphasis
has been placed in this work on grounding our analysis of these issues in
an understanding of the concrete experience of the Peronist rank and
file. I feel that this emphasis is important for two reasons. First, because
a grass-roots perspective is essential if we are to analyse the themes of
major concern to this book. A better understanding of the actions and
perceptions of rank-and-file Peronist unionists is essential to this enter
prise.
In addition, however, this aspect is crucial because it has largely been
overlooked by writers on this subject. One has a curiously ambiguous
feeling reading much of the material written on modern Argentine
history. The working class is present in such analysis; political reality
and the nature of the dominant Argentine political and intellectual
discourse clearly compel such a presence. Yet, this presence has a cer
tain unreality about it. The working class usually appears as a cypher,
almost an ideal construct at the service of different ideological para
digms. The essence of these abstractions derives from broader notions
concerning the relationship of workers and Peronism. From Gino Ger-
mani and modernisation sociology we find the passive, manipulated
urban masses which result from an incomplete modernisation process.
Marxism and Latin American communism and socialism present us
with inexperienced proletarians incapable of realising their true
class interests, dominated by bourgeois ideology and controlled and
manipulated by demagogic politicians and a ruthless union bureau-
Introduction 3
cracy. Finally, the Peronist left and many radical youth sectors of the
late 1960s and early 1970s offered a vision of exemplary proletarians
forging a peculiarly Argentine movement towards socialism and
national liberation. Behind these paradigms lurk a series of global an
tinomies which have dominated the general debate over populism and
the working class: traditional/modern, cooptation/autonomy, false
consciousness/class consciousness, and of particular importance for
Peronism in the post-1955 era, resistance and integration. What these
abstractions fail to give us is generally any sense of the concrete histori
cal experience of working people and their complex, ambiguous, fre
quently contradictory responses.
I would suggest that this lack results, partly at least, from the long
standing failure of much academic theory to come to terms adequately
with the complexity of working-class experience. It is also partly due,
however, to the extraordinary polemical relevance of past historical
models and experience in contemporary Argentina. Past historical ex
perience is evidently a crucial bedrock of contemporary ideological and
political debate in most societies. In Argentina, however, the past has
been lived as the present in a peculiarly intense way. It has been pre
cisely a perception of this fact which has underlain much of the aura of
pessimism and fatalism which has informed public and intellectual atti
tudes toward the Argentine ‘enigma*. Argentines have seemed con
demned to endure a present dominated by symbols drawn from past
conflicts and experiences. National figures, social and political move
ments from the past have frequently become mythologies which serve
as symbols whose function is to rationalise, justify and give emotional
coherence to present political needs.
In the case of the working class such mythologising has implied a
simplifying and an idealising of the painful complexities of working-
class experience. Much of the internal debate within Peronism over the
last thirty years has indeed revolved around the conflicting idealisations
and stereotypes of working-class history and experience. Similarly, an
understanding of the development of the Peronist left and guerrilla
groups in the late 1960s and 1970s must be based on an understanding
of their mythologies of the working class and its role in Peronism in
general and particularly during the decade following Peron’s ouster in
1955. Such mythologies are both bad for historical understanding and
pernicious for political practice by groups who have claimed to sym
bolise and represent this working class. Uncovering some of the reality
behind these myths concerning the working-class presence in Peronism
is one of the major preoccupations of this work.
4 Introduction
The sources used for this study have been primarily threefold. First,
I have made use of archival resources that existed in Argentina. These
included national newspapers, magazines from the period, trade union
newspapers and journals, yearbooks and materials available in govern
ment agencies, principally the Ministry of Labour. Second, I was fortu
nate enough to have access to a large number of unofficial Peronist
newspapers, rank-and-file newspapers, pamphlets, and barrio broad
sheets. These were almost exclusively part of private personal holdings
not available to the general public. Third, I have relied heavily on inter
views, conversations, and discussions with participants active within
the unions in this period.
The general approach adopted in terms of the organisation of this
work has been a narrative analytical one. The chapters follow a chrono
logical order. It should be emphasised that within such an approach sel
ection has been made. This work is not a history of Argentina in the
decades following the overthrow of Perön. Many issues have been
referred to obliquely, or only as they had bearing on the labour move
ment. Thus, for example, the relations between civilian authorities and
the military, or the intrigues within the armed forces, are referred to
very briefly and only as they affect the overall context within which the
Peronist unions had to operate.
The first chapter, ‘Peronism and the working class, 1943-55’, pro
vides an interpretation of the relationship between Peronism and the
working class in the period of the formation of the Peronist movement
and the Peronist governments. It seeks, in particular, to examine the
roots of the working class’s identification with Peronism so that we
may better understand the reaction of the working class to the situation
created by the overthrow of Perön. Part Two, ‘The Peronist Resist
ance,* deals with the resistance of the working class and other sectors of
the Peronist movement to the military regimes which governed Argen
tina from 1955 to 1958. Part Three, ‘Frondizi and integration: temp
tation and disenchantment’, analyses the period of Arturo Frondizi’s
government, 1958-62. In Part Four, ‘The ^andor era*, I have studied
the development of the Peronist union movement’s power under the
dominant influence of Augusto Vandor, the metal workers’ leader, in
the period from the overthrow of Frondizi to the miliary coup of June
1966. Finally, Part Five, ‘Workers and the Revolucion Argentina*,
offers an analysis of the period of military government from 1966 to
1973-
PA R T O N E
The background
1
Peronism and the working class,

1943-55
- Speak freely. What is the problem? You speak Tedesco. The colonel
will understand you better. - Well... - You are Tedesço? Son of Ita
lians, no? - Yes, colonel. - I thought so. What’s up Tedesco? - Very
simple, colonel; a lot of work and very little cash. - That’s clear. Where?
- We work on the night shift in ... They pay us 3 pesos and 30 centavos
each night. - That’s a disgrace! We’ll fix that immediately. I will call the
owners of the factory so that they sign a contract with you people. How
much do you want to earn? - We would settle for 3 pesos and 33 cents
but the just wage would be 3.50 a night. - Everything will turn out
alright. It’s impossible that they still exploit workers in this way. -
Thank you colonel. - Tedesco, you stay. The rest can go and rest easy.
Mariano Tedesco, founder of the A so c ia c io n O b r e r a T e x til
Well look, let me say it once and for all. I didn’t invent Peron. I’ll tell
you this once so that I can be done with this impulse of good will that I
am following in my desire to free you a little of so much bull shit. The
truth: I didn’t invent Peron or Evita, the miraculous one. They were
born as a reaction to your bad governments. I didn’t invent Peron, or
Evita, or their doctrines. They were summoned as defence by a people
who you and yours submerged in a long path of misery. They were born
of you, by you and for you.
Enrique Santos Discépolo
Organised labour and the Peronist state

Under the guidance of successive conservative governments the Argen
tine economy had responded to the world recession of the 1930s by
producing internally an increasing number of manufactured goods it
had previously imported.1 While generally maintaining adequate
income levels for the rural sector, and guaranteeing the traditional
elite’s privileged economic ties with the United Kingdom, the Argen
tine state stimulated this import substitution by a judicious policy of
tariff protection, exchange controls and the provision of industrial
7
8 The background
credit.2 Industrial production more than doubled between 1930/5 and
1945/9; imports which in 1925/30 accounted for almost one quarter of
the Argentine G NP had been reduced to some 6% in the 1940/4 quin
quennium. From importing some 35% of its machinery and industrial
equipment in the first period, Argentina imported only 9.9% in the
second.3 In addition the Second World War saw a considerable amount
of export-led industrial growth as Argentine manufactured goods pen
etrated foreign markets.4 By the mid 1940s Argentina was an increas
ingly industrialised economy; while the traditional rural sector
remained the major source of foreign exchange earnings, the dynamic
centre of capital accumulation now lay in industry and manufacture.
Changes in the social structure reflected these economic develop
ments. The number of industrial establishments increased from 38,456
in 1935 to 86,440 in 1946. At the same time the number of industrial
workers proper increased from 435,816 to 1,056,673 in 1946.5 The in
ternal composition of this industrial labour force had also changed.
New members were now drawn from the interior provinces of Argen
tina rather than from overseas immigration, which had effectively
ceased after 1930. They were attracted to the expanding urban centres
of the littoral zone, in particular to the Greater Buenos Aires area out
side the limits of the Federal Capital. By 1947 some 1,368,000 migrants
from the interior had arrived in Buenos Aires attracted by the rapid in
dustrial expansion.6 In the overwhelmingly industrial suburb of Avella-
neda, across the Riachuelo river from the Capital, out of a total
population in 1947 of some 518,312 over 173,000 had been born out
side the city or province of Buenos Aires.7
While the industrial economy expanded rapidly the working class did
not benefit from this expansion. Real wages declined in general as
salaries lagged behind inflation. Faced with concerted employer and
state repression, workers could do little to successfully improve wages
and work conditions. Labour and social legislation remained sparse and
sporadically enforced. Outside the workplace the situation was little
better as working-class families confronted, unaided by the state, the
social problems of rapid urbanisation. A survey of 1937 found, for
example, that 60% of working-class families in the Capital lived in one
room.8
The labour movement which existed at the time of the military coup
of 1943 was divided and weak. There existed in Argentina four labour
centrals: the anarchist Federaciön Obrera Regional Argentina
(FORA), now simply a rump of anarchist militants; the syndicalist
Union Sindical Argentina (USA), also considerably reduced in
Peronism and the working class, 1943-jf 9
influence; finally there was the Confederacion General de Trabajo
(CGT), which was divided into two organisations, a CGT No. 1 and
another CG T No. 2.9 The influence of this organisationally fragmented
labour movement oh the working class was limited. Perhaps some 20%
of the urban labour force was organised in 1943, the majority of them
being in the tertiary sector. The great majority of the industrial prolet
ariat was outside effective union organisation. The most dynamic
group to attempt to organise in non-traditional areas were the commu
nists who had some success in organising in construction, food process
ing and wood working. However, the vital areas of industrial
expansion in the 1930s and 1940s - textiles and metal working - were
still virtually terra incognita for labour organisation in 1943. Of
447,212 union members in 1941 the transport sector and services
accounted for well over 50% of membership, while industry had
144,922 affiliates.10
Peron, from his position as Secretary of Labour and late Vice Presi
dent of the military government installed in 1943, set about addressing
some of the basic concerns of the emerging industrial labour force.11 At
the same time he set about undermining the influence of rival, radical
competitors in the working class. His social and labour policy created
sympathy for him among both organised and unorganised workers. In
addition, crucial sectors of the union leadership came to see their future
organisational prospects as bound up in Peron’s political survival, as
traditional political forces from both left and right attacked his figure
and policies in the course of 1945. The growing working-class support
for Peron which this engendered first crystallised in the 17 October
1945 demonstration which secured his release from confinement and
launched him on the path to victory in the presidential elections of
February 1946.12
While there had been many specific improvements in work con
ditions and social legislation in the 1943—6 period the decade of Peronist
government from 1946 to 195 5 was to have the most profound effect on
the working class’s position in Argentine society. First, the period saw
a great increase in the organisational strength and social weight of the
working class. A state sympathetic to the extension of union organis
ation and a working class eager to translate its political victory into con
crete organisational gains combined to effect a rapid increase in the
extension of trade unionism. In 1948 the rate of unionisation had risen
to 30.5% of the wage-earning population, and in 1954 it had reached
42.5%. In the majority of manufacturing industries the rate was be
tween 50% and 70%.13 Between 1946 and 1951 total union membership
IO The background
increased from 520,000 members to 2,334,000. Industrial activities
such as textiles and metal working, where unionisation had been weak
or non-existent prior to 1946, by the end of the decade had unions with
membership numbering in the 100,000s. In addition a large number of
state employees were also unionised for the first time. Accompanying
this massive extension of unionisation there was, for the first time, the
development of a global system of collective bargaining. The contracts
signed throughout Argentine industry in the 1946-8 period regulated
wage scales and job descriptions and also included a whole array of
social provisions concerning sick leave, maternity leave, and vaca
tions.14
The organisational structure imposed on this union expansion was
important in moulding the future development of the union movement.
Unionisation was to be based on the unit of economic activity, rather
than that of the individual trade or enterprise. In addition, in each area
of economic activity only one union was granted legal recognition to
bargain with employers in that industry. Employers were obliged by
law to bargain with the recognised union, and conditions and wages
established in such bargaining were applicable to all workers in that
industry regardless of whether they were unionised or not. Beyond
that, a specific centralised union structure was laid down, encompass
ing local branches and moving up through national federations to a
single confederation, the Confederaciön General de Trabajo (CGT).
Finally, the role of the state in overseeing and articulating this structure
was clearly established. The Ministry of Labour granted a union legal
recognition of its bargaining rights with employers. Decree 23,852 of
October 1945, known as the Law of Professional Associations, which
established this system, also established the right of the state to oversee
considerable areas of union activity. Thus, the legal structure assured
unions many advantages: bargaining rights, protection of union of
ficials from victimisation, a centralised and unified union structure,
automatic deductions of union dues and the use of these dues to under
write extensive social welfare activities. It also, however, made the state
the ultimate guarantor and overseer of this process and the benefits de
riving from it.
While the massive expansion of union organisation assured the work
ing class recognition as a social force in the sphere of production, the
Peronist period also saw the integration of this social force within an
emerging political coalition overseen by the state. From labour’s point
of view the precise nature of their political incorporation within the
regime was not immediately apparent. The general contours of this pol-
Peronism and the working class, 1943-55 11
itical integration only emerged in the course of Peron’s first presidency
and they were to be confirmed and developed during the second. The
first period, from 1946 to 1951, saw the gradual subordination of the
union movement to the state and the elimination of the old-guard
leaders who had been instrumental in mobilising the support of organ
ised labour for Perön in 1945, and who had formed the Partido Labo-
rista to act as labour’s political expression. Their notions of political
and organisational autonomy, and the conditional nature of their sup
port for Perön, did not combine well with his political ambitions. Nor,
it must be said, did their insistence on the principle of labour autonomy
match the dominant perceptions of the rapidly expanding union mem
bership.15 Moreover, the weight of state intervention and the popular
political support for Perön among their members inevitably limited the
options open to the old-guard union leadership. Increasingly the
unions were incorporated into a monolithic Peronist movement and
were called upon to act as the state’s agents vis-à-vis the working class,
organising political support and serving as conduits of government
poliçy among the workers.
As the outline of the justicialist state emerged in the second presi
dency, with its corporatist pretensions of organising and directing large
spheres of social, political and economic life, the role officially allotted
to the union movement in incorporating the working class into this
state became clear. The attractions of such a relationship were great for
both leaders and rank and file. An extensive social welfare network was
in place operated through the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare,
the Fundaciön Eva Perön, and the unions themselves. Labour leaders
were now to be found sitting in the congress; they were routinely con
sulted by the government on a range of national issues; they entered the
Argentine diplomatic corp as labour attachés.16 In addition, concrete
economic gains for the working class were clear and immediate. As
Argentine industry expanded, impelled by state incentives and a
favourable international economic situation, workers benefited. Real
wages for industrial workers increased by 53% between 1946 and 1949.
Although real wages would decline with the economic crisis of the
regime’s last years, the shift of national income towards workers was to
be unaffected. Between 1946 and 1949 the share of wages in the national
income increased from 40.1% to 49%.17
While there were demonstrations of working-class opposition to
aspects of Peronist economic policy, there was little generalised
questioning of the terms of the political integration of labour within the
Peronist state. Indeed, a crucial legacy of the Perön era for labour was
12 The background
the integration of the working class into a national political community
and a corresponding recognition of its civic and political status within
that community. Beyond that, the experience of this decade
bequeathed to the working-class presence within that community a
remarkable degree of political cohesion. The Peronist era largely erased
former political loyalties among workers and entrenched new ones.
Socialists, communists, and radicals who had competed for working-
class allegiance prior to Perön had been largely marginalised in terms
of influence by 1955. This marginalisation was partly due to state re
pression of non-Peronist politicians and labour leaders. Principally,
however, it reflected the efficacy of Peron’s social policy, the advan
tages of state patronage and the inadequacies of non-Peronist competi
tors for working-class allegiance. For socialists and radicals Peronism
was to remain a moral and civic outrage; a demonstration of the back
wardness and lack of civic virtue of Argentine workers. This position
had determined their opposition to the military government of 1943-6,
their support of the Union Democratica, and their consistent hostility
to Perön throughout the following decade.
The Communist Party attempted to adopt a more flexible position
than its erstwhile allies. Soon after the election victory the party
changed its characterisation of Peronism as a form of fascism, dissolved
its union apparatus and ordered its militants to enter the CGT and its
unions in order to work with the misguided Peronist masses and win
them over.18 Yet it, too, was never able to recover from the political
error of supporting the anti-Peronist coalition, the Union Democra
tica, in the 1946 elections; nor was it able to offer a credible alternative
to the clear gains to be derived from integration within the Peronist
state. While at the local level some of its militants were able to maintain
credibility and lead some important strikes, politically the party could
never challenge the hegemony of Peronism among organised labour.
The importance of this legacy of political cohesion can be clearly ap
preciated if we also bear in mind the relative racial and ethnic homo
geneity of the Argentine working class, and the concentration of this
working class within a few urban centres, above all Greater Buenos
Aires. Together these factors helped give the Argentine working class
and its labour movement a weight within the wider national com
munity which was unparalleled in Latin America.
Workers and the political appeal of Peronism

The relationship between workers and their organisations and the
Peronism and the working class, 13
Peronist movement and state is, therefore, clearly vital for understand
ing the 1943-55 period. Indeed, the intimacy of the relationship has
generally been taken as defining the uniqueness of Peronism within the
spectrum of Latin American populist experiences. How are we to inter
pret the basis of this relationship, and beyond that, the significance of
the Peronist experience for Peronist workers? Answers to this question
have increasingly rejected earlier explanations which saw working-
class support for Peronism in terms of a division between an old and
new working class. Sociologists like Gino Germani, leftist competitors
for working-class allegiance, and indeed Peronists themselves,
explained worker involvement in Peronism in terms of inexperienced
migrant workers who, unable to assert an independent social and politi
cal identity in their new urban environment and untouched by the
institutions and ideology of the traditional working class, were
disponible (available) to be used by dissident elite sectors. It was these
immature proletarians who flocked to Peron’s banner in the 1943-6
period.19
In the revisionist studies working-class support for Perön has been
regarded as representing a logical involvement of labour in a state-
directed reformist project which promised labour concrete material
gains.20 With this more recent scholarship the image of the working-
class relationship to Peronism has shifted from that of a passive ma
nipulated mass to that of class-conscious actors seeking a realistic path
for the satisfaction of their material needs. Political allegiance has, thus,
been regarded, implicitly at least, within this approach as reducible to a
basic social and economic rationalism. This instrumentalism would
seem to be borne out by common sense. Almost anyone enquiring of a
Peronist worker why he supported Perön has been met by the signifi
cant gesture of tapping the back pocket where the money is kept, sym
bolising a basic class pragmatism of monetary needs and their
satisfaction. Clearly, Peronism from the workers* point of view was in
a fundamental sense a response to economic grievances and class exploi
tation.
Yet, it was also something more. It was also a political movement
which represented a crucial shift in working-class political allegiance
and behaviour, and which presented its adherents with a distinct politi
cal vision. In order to understand the significance of this new allegiance
we need to examine carefully the specific features of this political vision
and the discourse in which it was expressed, rather than simply regard
Peronism as an inevitable manifestation of social and economic dissatis
faction. Gareth Stedman Jones, commenting on the reluctance of social
14 The background
historians to take sufficient account of the political, has recently
observed that ‘a political movement is not simply a manifestation of
distress and pain, its existence is distinguished by a shared conviction
articulating a political solution to distress and a political diagnosis of its
causes’.21 Thus if Peronism did represent a concrete solution to felt
material needs, we still need to understand why the solution took the
specific political form of Peronism and not another. O ther political
movements did speak to the same needs and offer solutions to them.
Even programmatically there were many formal similarities between
Peronism and other political forces. What we need to understand is
Peronism’s success, its distinctiveness, why its political appeal was
more credible for workers - which areas it touched that others did not.
To do this we need to take Perön’s political and ideological appeal
seriously and examine the nature of Peronism’s rhetoric and compare it
with that of its rivals for working-class allegiance.
Workers as citizens in Peronist political rhetoric

Peronism’s fundamental political appeal lay in its ability to redefine th t
notion of citizenship within a broader, ultimately social, context. The
issue of citizenship per se, and the question of access to full political
rights, was a potent part of Peronist discourse, forming part of a
language of protest at political exclusion that had great popular reson
ance. Part of the power of such elements in Peronist political language,
came from a recognition that it formed part of a traditional language of
democratic politics which demanded equal access to political rights.
This tradition had found its principal prior embodiment in the Union
Civica Radical and its leader Hipölito Yrigoyen. The Radical Party
prior to 1930 had mobilised the urban and rural middle classes and a not
inconsiderable section of the urban poor with a rhetoric permeated
with symbols of struggle against the oligarchy, and with a traditional
language of citizenship, political rights and obligations.22 Peronism was
certainly eclectic enough to lay claim to, and absorb elements of, this
Yrigoyenist heritage.23
In part, too, the force of such a concern for the rights of political citi
zenship lay in the scandal of the década infame, the infamous decade
which followed the military overthrow of Yrigoyen in 1930.24 The
década infame, which stretched in fact from 1930 until the military
coup of 1943, witnessed the reimposition and maintenance of the con
servative elite’s political power through a system of institutionalised
fraud and corruption. It was the epoch of *Ya votaste, raja pronto para
Peronism and the working class, /9 4 J-J; 15
tu casa* (You’ve already voted, get along quickly to your home!),
enforced by the hired thugs of the conservative committees.25 In Avel-
laneda Don Alberto Barcelö controlled Argentina’s emerging in
dustrial centre with the aid of a police force, a political machine, the
underworld and votes from the dead, much as he had done since the
First World War.26 In the province of Buenos Aires Governor Manuel
Fresco coordinated a similar machine of clientelism and corruption.
The only island of relative political rectitude was in the Federal Capital
where fraud was rarely practised. Political corruption set a tone of
social degeneration of the traditional elite, epitomised in the seemingly
endless series of scandals involving public figures and foreign economic
groups which was to furnish the emerging groups of nationalists with
many of their targets.27
Beyond that, such institutional corruption bred a broader public
cynicism. In the words of one author ‘this was a corruption which gave
lessons’.28 The political and moral malaise embodied in this situation
clearly engendered a crisis of confidence and legitimacy in established
political institutions. Peronism could, therefore, draw political capital
by denouncing the hypocrisy of a formal democratic system which had
little of democracy’s real content. Moreover, the weight of Peronist
claims to this heritage was reinforced by the fact that even those parties
formally opposed to the fraud of the 1930s were perceived to have com
promised themselves with the conservative regime. This was particu
larly the case with the Radical Party which after a period of principled
abstention between 1931 and 1936 had,under the leadership of Marcello*
T. de Alvear, reentered the political fray to act as a loyal opposition in a
political system it knew it would never be allowed to dominate. The
crisis of legitimacy extended, therefore, far beyond the conservative
elite itself and was a constantly reiterated theme of Peronist propaganda
in 1945 and 1946. As the organ of the Partido Laborista expressed it
during the run up to the 1946 elections: ‘The old traditional parties, for
many years passed, have ceased to be voices of the people in order to act
instead in small circles of clear unpopular character, deaf and blind to
the worries of that mass whose aid they only think to call upon when
elections come around.*29
Nevertheless, Peronism’s political appeal to workers cannot be
explained simply in terms of its capacity to articulate claims to political
participation and a full recognition of the rights of citizenship. For
mally the rights associated with such claims - universal suffrage, the
right of association, equality before the law - had long existed in Argen
tina. The Saenz Pena Law of 1912, the law of universal suffrage, con-
16 The background
tinued in operation in Argentina throughout the década infame.
Similarly there existed in Argentina a long-established tradition of rep
resentative social and political institutions. Peronism’s articulation of
democratic demands was, therefore, a claim for a reestablishment of
previously recognised rights and claims. Moreover, Perön had no
monopoly of this language of political exclusion. Indeed it was a
language which his opponents in the Union Democratica used against
him, accusing him of representing a closed, undemocratic system, and
it was a discourse which would continue to form the basis of political
opposition to Perön throughout his regime and after his fall from
power. Finally, it was, in the sense that it addressed the general issue of
citizenship, not an appeal directed specifically at workers but, by defi
nition, at all voters whose rights had been abused.
Perön’s political success with workers lay, rather, in his capacity to
recast the whole issue of citizenship within a new social context.30
Peronist discourse denied the validity of liberalism’s separation of the
state and politics from civil society. Citizenship was not to be defined
any longer simply in terms of individual rights and relations within pol
itical society but was now redefined in terms of the economic and social
realm of civil society. Within the terms of this rhetoric to struggle for
rights in the sphere of politics inevitably implied social change. Indeed,
by constantly emphasising the social dimension of citizenship Perön
explicitly challenged the legitimacy of a notion of democracy which
limited itself to participation in formal political rights and he extended
it to include participation in the social and economic life of the nation.
In part this was reflected in a claim for a democracy which included
social rights and reforms, and in an attitude which treated with scepti
cism political claims couched in the rhetoric of formal liberalism. This
was most starkly apparent in the election campaign of 1946. The politi
cal appeal of the Union Democratica was almost entirely expressed in
a language of liberal democratic slogans. In the political manifestos and
speeches there was virtually no mention made of the social issue.
Instead, one finds a political discourse entirely framed in terms of a
rhetoric of ‘liberty’, ‘democracy*, ‘the constitution’, ‘free elections’,
‘freedom of speech’.31
Perön, in contrast, constantly reminded his audiences that behind
the phraseology of liberalism lay a basic social division and that a true
democracy could only be built by doing justice to this social issue. In a
speech in July 1945 in which he responded to growing opposition
demands for elections he said: ‘If some ask for liberty we too demand it
... but not the liberty of fraud . .. nor the liberty to sell the country
Peronism and the working class, 1943-$$ l7
out, nor to exploit the working people.*32 Luis Gay, the secretary gen
eral of the Partido Laborista, echoed this perception in a speech at the
formal proclamation of Peron’s presidential ticket in February 1946:
Political democracy is a lie on its own. It is only a reality when it is ac
companied by an economic reconstruction of the economy which makes
democracy possible on the terrain of practical happenings. They are lying who
don’t agree with this concept and only speak of the constitution and of that
liberty which they defrauded and denied right up to the coup of 3 June 1943.33
It seems clear that this kind of rhetoric struck a deep chord with
working people emerging from the década infame. Manuel Pichel, a
delegate of the CGT, stated in the first official demonstration organised
by the CGT to back Perön against the mounting opposition attack in
July 1945: ‘It is not enough to speak of democracy. We don’t want a
democracy defended by the reactionary capitalists, a democracy which
would mean a return to the oligarchy is not something we would sup
port.’34 Mariano Tedesco, a textile workers* leader, recalled some years
later that ‘people in 1945 had already had a belly-full. For years they
had seen the satisfaction of their hunger delayed with songs to
liberty.*35 In a similar vein, the scepticism with which the formal sym
bols of liberalism were met is forcibly evoked in an anecdote Julio
Mafud recalls from the year 1945. Mafud remembers a group of
workers responding to a questioner who asked if they were worried
about freedom of speech if Perön were to be elected in the upcoming
election. They had replied, ‘Freedom of speech is to do with you
people. We have never had it.*36
More fundamentally still, Peron’s recasting of the issue of citizen
ship implied a distinct, new vision of the working class’s role in society.
Traditionally the liberal political system in Argentina, as elsewhere,
had recognised the political existence of workers as individual, ato
mised citizens with formal equality of rights in the political arena, at the
same time as it had denied, or hindered, its constitution as a social class
at the political level. Certainly, faithful to the liberal separation of state
and civil society, it had denied the legitimacy of transferring the social
identity built around conflict at the social level to the political arena.
Rather, any unity, social cohesion and sense of distinct interests
attained in civil society were to be dissolved and atomised in the politi
cal marketplace where individual citizens sought, through the me
diation of political parties, to influence the state and thus reconcile and
balance the competing interests which existed in civil society.
Radicalism, for all its rhetoric of ‘the people* and ‘the oligarchy*,
18 The background
never challenged the presuppositions of this liberal political system.
Indeed, its clientelistic political machine, built around local bosses, was
ideally placed to act as the broker of the individual citizens* claims in
the political marketplace.37 Peronism, on the other hand, premised its
political appeal to workers on a recognition of the working class as a
distinct social force which demanded recognition and representation as
such in the political life of the nation. This representation would no
longer be achieved simply through the exercise of the formal rights of
citizenship and the primary mediation of political parties. Instead, the
working class as an autonomous social force would have direct, indeed
privileged access, to the state through its trade unions.
The uniqueness of this vision of working-class social and political
integration in the Argentina of the 1940s becomes apparent if we exam
ine the distinctive way Perön addressed the working class in his
speeches both during the election campaign of 1945-6 and after.38 In
contrast to the more traditional caudillo or political boss Peron’s pol
itical discourse did not address workers as atomised individuals whose
only hope of achieving social coherence and political meaning for their
lives lay in establishing ties with a leader who could intercede for them
with an all-powerful state. Instead Perön addressed them as a social
force whose own organisation and strength were vital if he were to be
successful at the level of the state in asserting their rights. He was only
their spokesman and could only be as successful as they were united
and organised. Continually Perön emphasised the frailty of individuals
and the arbitrariness of human fate, and hence the necessity for them to
depend on nothing but their own will to achieve their rights. Those
rights and interests would have to be negotiated with other social
groups. Within this rhetoric, therefore, the state was not simply an all-
powerful dispenser of desired resources which distributed these -
through its chosen instrument, the leader - to passive individuals.
Rather, it was a space where classes- not isolated individuals - could act
politically and socially with one another to establish corporate rights
and claims. Within this discourse the ultimate arbiter of this process
might be the state, and ultimately the figure of Perön identified with
the state, but he did not on his own constitute these groups as social
forces; they had a certain independent, and irreducible, social, and
hence political, presence.39
Clearly there were strong elements of a personalist, almost mystical
caudillismo attached to the position of both Perön and Evita Perön
within Peronist rhetoric. Partly this resulted from the different political
needs of Perön and Peronism at different times. From a secure position
Peronism and the working class, 1943-$$ 19
of state power the need to emphasise working-class organisational
autonomy and social cohesion was evidently less than in the period of
political contest preceding the achievement of that power. Indeed such
an emphasis would soon conflict with the new demands of the state.
Even during the pre-1946 period the personalist elements of Perön’s
political appeal were present, as witness the consistent, overwhelming
chant of ‘Peron! Peron!* which dominated the mobilisation of 17
October 1945. Nevertheless, even at the height of the adulation of Evita
and the growing state-sponsored cult of Perön’s personal power
during the second presidency, this personalist element was not present
entirely at the expense of a continued affirmation of the social and or
ganisational strength of the working class.
This affirmation of the workers as a social presence and their incor
poration directly into the affairs of state evidently implied a new con
ception of the legitimate spheres of interest and activity of the working
class and its institutions. This was most evident in Perön’s assertion of
the workers’ rights to be concerned with, and to help determine, the
economic development of the nation. It was within the context of this
new vision of the working class’s role in society that the issues of indus
trialisation and economic nationalism, key elements in Peronism’s pol
itical appeal, were to be situated. Peronist rhetoric was open enough to
absorb existing strands of nationalist thoùght. Some of these went
back, once again, to the Yrigoyenist heritage, particularly his conflict
with foreign petroleum companies in his last years in office. Other ele
ments were absorbed from the groups of nationalist intellectuals which
emerged in the 1930s and whose ideas were influential among the mili
tary. Thus, for example, terms such as cipayo and vendepatria became
incorporated into the political language of Peronism to refer to those
forces which wished to maintain Argentina within the economic orbit
of the United States or the United Kingdom as a provider of agricultural
and pastoral products.40 Such a language became symbolic of a commit
ment to industrialisation overseen and guided by a commitment to
Argentina potencia in contrast to the Argentina granja of Peronism’s
opponents.
The success of Perön’s identification of himself with the creation of
an industrial Argentina and the political appeal of such symbolism did
not reside primarily in programmatic terms. Given the evident concern
of an emerging industrial workforce with the issue of industrialisation,
and Peronism’s strenuous self-identification with this symbol, and
later monopoly of the language of economic development, it would be
tempting to explain such a success in terms of a unique attachment on
20 The background
the part of Peron to such a programme. Yet, in terms of political pro
grammes and formal commitments, the association of Peronism with
industrialisation and of its opponents with a rural, pastoral Argentina
was scarcely accurate. Emphases varied greatly and the commitment
was rarely consistent, but very few of the major political parties in
Argentina denied by the 1940s the need for some sort of state-
sponsored industrialisation. The most articulate sector of the conserva
tive elite had affirmed their recognition of the irreversibility of
industrialisation with the Plan Pinedo of 1940. The Radical Party
had also increasingly adopted a pro-industrialisation stance and the
Yrigoyenist wing of the party adopted in April 1945, with the Declara
tion of Avellaneda, an economic blueprint every bit as industrialist
as that of Peron. The left, too, in the form of the communists and
socialists had consistently used an anti-imperialist rhetoric throughout
the 1930s.41
The real issue at stake in the 1940s was not, therefore, so much indus
trialisation versus agrarian development, or state intervention versus
laissez-faire. Rather it was the issue of the different potential meanings
of industrialism, the social and political parameters within which it
should take place which were at stake. It was Peron’s ability to define
these parameters in a new way which appealed to the working class, and
his ability to address this issue in a particularly credible way for
workers that enabled him to appropriate the issue and symbol of in
dustrial development and make it a political weapon with which to dis
tinguish himself from his opponents.
The success of this appropriation was partly a matter of perception.
Certainly, the association of Peron’s political opponents in 1945 and
1946 with the bastions of traditional rural society, the Sociedad Rural
and the Jockey Club, weakened the credibility of their commitment to
industrialism. In a similar way, their close association with the US am
bassador did not strengthen belief in their devotion to national
sovereignty and economic independence. In terms of image making the
identification of Peronism with industrial and social progress, with
modernity, was an established fact by the end of the presidential elec
tion campaign of 1946. It was not, however, solely a matter of images
and public relations. More fundamentally the working class recognised
in Peron’s espousal of industrial development a vital role for itself as an
actor in the greatly expanded public sphere which Peronism offered to
it as a field for its activity. Indeed Peron consistently premised the very
notion of national development on the full participation of the working
class in public life and social justice. Industrialisation within his
discourse was no longer conceivable, as it had been prior to 1943, at the

expense of the extreme exploitation of the working class. In a speech
delivered during the election campaign Perön had affirmed: ‘In con
clusion: Argentina cannot continue to stagnate in a somnolent rhythm
of activity to which so many who had come and lived at her expense had
condemned her. Argentina must recover the firm pulse of a healthy and
clean living youth, Argentina needs the young blood of the working
class/42 Within Peronist rhetoric social justice and national sovereignty
were credibly interrelated themes rather than simply enunciated
abstract slogans.
A believable vision: credibility and concreteness in Perôn's political

discourse
The issue of credibility is crucial for understanding both Peron’s suc
cessful identification of himself with certain important symbols such as
industrialism and, more generally, the political impact of his discourse
on workers. Gareth Stedman Jones, in the essay to which we have
already referred, notes that to be successful ‘a particular political vo
cabulary must convey a practicable hope of a general alternative and a
believable means of realising it such that potential recruits can think in
its terms*.43 The vocabulary of Peronism was both visionary and believ
able. The credibility was in part rooted in the immediate, concrete
nature of its rhetoric. This involved a tying down of abstract political
slogans to their most concrete material aspects. As we have already
seen, in the crucial years 1945 and 1946 this was clearly contrasted with
a language of great abstraction used by Peron’s political opponents.
While Peron’s rhetoric was capable of lofty sermonising, particularly
once he had attained the presidency, and depending on the audience he
was addressing, his speeches to working-class audiences in this forma
tive period have, for their time, a unique tone.
They are, for example, framed in a language clearly distinct from that
of classic radicalism, with its woolly generalities concerning national
renovation and civic virtue. The language of ‘the oligarchy’ and ‘the
people* was still present but now usually more precisely defined. Their
utilisation as general categories to denote good and evil, those who
were with Perön from those against, was still there but now there was
also a frequent concretising, sometimes as rich and poor, often as capi
talist and worker. While there was a rhetoric of an indivisible com
munity - symbolised in ‘the people’ and ‘the nation* - the working class
was given an implicitly superior role within this whole, often as the re-
22 The background
pository of national values. ‘The people* frequently were transformed
into ‘the working people* (elpueblo trabajador): the people, the nation
and the workers became interchangeable.
A similar denial of the abstract can be found in Peronism’s appeal to
economic and political nationalism. In terms of the formal construction
from the state of Peronist ideology, categories such as ‘the nation* and
‘Argentina* were accorded an abstract, mystical significance.44 When,
however, Perön specifically addressed the working class, particularly
in the formative period, but also after, one finds little appeal to the ir
rational, mystical elements of nationalist ideology. There was little con
cern with the intrinsic virtues of Argentinidad nor with the historical
precedents of criollo culture as expressed in a historical nostalgia for
some long-departed national essence. Such concerns were mainly the
province of middle-class intellectuals in the various nationalist groups
which attempted, with little success, to use Peronism as a vehicle for
their aspirations. Working-class nationalism was addressed primarily
in terms of concrete economic issues.
Moreover, Peronism*s political credibility for workers was due not
only to the concreteness of its rhetoric, but also to its immediacy.
Perön’s political vision of a society based on social justice and on the
social and political integration of workers into that society was not pre
mised, as it was for example, in leftist political discourse, on the prior
achievement of long-term, abstract structural transformations, nor on
the gradual acquisition at some future date of an adequate conscious
ness on the part of the working class. It took working-class conscious
ness, habits, life styles and values as it found them and affirmed their
sufficiency and value. It glorified the everyday and the ordinary as a
sufficient basis for the rapid attainment of a juster society, provided
that certain easily achievable and self-evident goals were met. Primarily
this meant support for Perön as head of state and the maintenance of a
strong union movement. In this sense Peronism’s political appeal was
radically plebeian; it eschewed the need for a peculiarly enlightened
political elite and reflected and inculcated a profound anti-
intellectualism.
The glorification of popular life styles and habits implied a political
style and idiom well in tune with popular sensibilities. Whether it was
in symbolically striking the pose of the descamisado (shirtless one) in a
political rally, or in the nature of the imagery used in his speeches,
Perön had an ability to communicate to working-class audiences
which his rivals lacked. The poet Luis Franco commented cryptically
on Perön’s ‘spiritual affinity with tango lyrics*.45 His ability to use this
affinity to establish a bond with his audience was clearly shown in his
speech to those assembled in the Plaza de Mayo on 17 October 1945.
Towards the end of that speech Perön evoked the image of his mother,
‘mi vieja’: T said to you a little while ago that I would embrace you as I
would my mother because you have had the same griefs and the same
thoughts that my poor old lady must have felt in these days.*46 The ref
erence is apparently gratuitous, the empty phraseology of someone
who could think of nothing better to say until we recognise that the sen
timents echo exactly a dominant refrain of tango - the poor grief-laden
mother whose pain symbolises the pain of her children, of all the poor.
Perön’s identification of his own mother with the poor establishes a
sentimental identity between himself and his audience; with this tone of
nostalgia he was touching an important sensibility in Argentine popular
culture of the period.47 Significantly, too, the speech ended on another
‘tangoesque* note. Perön reminded his audience as they were about to
leave the Plaza, ‘remember that among you there are many women
workers who have to' be protected here and in life by you same
workers’.48 The theme of the threat to the women of the working class,
and the need to protect their women, was also a constant theme of both
tango and other forms of popular culture.
Perön’s use of such an idiom within which to frame his political
appeal often seems to us now, and indeed it seemed to many of his cri
tics at the time, to reek of the paternalistic condescension of the tra
ditional caudillo figure. His constant use of couplets from Martin
Fierro, or his conscious use of terms taken from lunfardo argot grates
on modem sensibilities. However, we should be careful to appreciate
the impact of his ability to speak in an idiom which reflected popular
sensibilities of the time. In accounts by observers and journalists of the
crucial formative years of Peronism we frequently find the adjectives
chahacano and burdo used to describe both Perön himself and his sup
porters. Both words have the sense of crude, cheap, coarse and they
also implied a lack of sophistication, an awkwardness, almost a country
bumpkin quality. While they were generally meant as epithets they
were not descriptions Peronists would necessarily have denied.
Indeed this capacity to recognise, reflect and foster a popular politi
cal style and idiom based on this plebeian realism contrasted strongly
with the political appeal of traditional working-class political parties.
The tone adopted by the latter when confronted by the working-class
effervescence of the mid 1940s was didactic, moralising and apparently
*4 The background
addressed to a morally and intellectually inferior audience. This was
particularly the case of the Socialist Party. Its analysis of the events of
17 October is illustrative of its attitude and tone:
The part of the people which lives its resentment, and perhaps only for its re
sentment, spilt over into the streets, threatened, yelled, trampled upon and as
saulted newspapers and persons in its demon-like fuiy, those persons who
were the very champions of its elevation and dignification.49
Behind this tone of fear, frustration and moralising lay a discourse
which addressed an abstract, almost mythical working class. Peronism
on the other hand was prepared, particularly in its formative period, to
recognise, and even glorify, workers who did ‘threaten, yell, and tram
ple with a demon-like fury*. Comparing Peron's political approach to
that of his rivals one is reminded of Ernst Bloch's comment concerning
Nazism's preemption of socialist and communist appeal among
German workers that ‘the Nazis speak falsely but to people, the com
munists truthfully, but of things'.50
Peron's ability to appreciate the tone of working-class sensibilities
and assumptions was reflected in other areas. There was, for example,
in Peronist rhetoric a tacit recognition of the immutability of social in
equality, a common sense, shrug of the shoulders acceptance of the re
ality of social and economic inequities, a recognition of what Pierre
Bourdieu has called ‘a sense of limits'.51 The remedies proposed to miti
gate these inequities were plausible and immediate. Perôn, in a speech
in Rosario in August 1944, had emphasised the apparently self-evident
reasonableness of his appeal, the mundaneness behind the abstract rhet
oric of social equality: ‘We want exploitation of man by man to cease in
our country and when this problem disappears we will equalise a little
the social classes so that there will not be in this country men who are
too poor nor those who are too rich.'52
This realism implied a political vision of a limited nature but it did
not eliminate utopian resonances; it simply made such resonances - a
yearning for social equality, for an end to exploitation —more credible
for a working class imbued by its experience of the década infame with
a certain cynicism regarding political promises and abstract slogans.
Indeed the credibility of Peron's political vision, the practicability of
the hope it offered, was affirmed on a daily basis by its actions from the
state. The solutions it offered the working class did not depend on some
future apocalypse for confirmation but were rather directly verifiable in
terms of everyday political activity and experience. Already by 1945 the
slogan had appeared among workers which was to symbolise this credi
bility: ‘Perön cumple!' (Perön delivers).
The heretical social impact of Peronism
Peronism meant a greatly increased social and political presence for the
working class within Argentine society. The impact of this can be
measured in institutional terms by reference to such factors as the inti
mate relationship between government and labour during the Perön
era, the massive extension of unionisation, the number of union-
sponsored members of congress. These are factors that are clearly de
monstrable empirically and often measurable statistically. There are,
however, other factors which need to be taken into account in assessing
Peronism’s social meaning for the working class - factors which are far
less tangible, far more difficult to quantify. We are dealing here with
factors such as pride, self-respect and dignity.
The meaning o f the ‘década infame *: working-class responses

In order to assess the importance of such factors we must return to the
década infame, for it was clearly a benchmark against which workers
measured their experience of Peronism. Popular culture of the Peronist
era was dominated by a temporal dichotomy which contrasted the
Peronist present with the recent past. As Ernesto Goldar has noted in
his analysis of Peronist popular fiction this dichotomy was ac
companied by a corresponding contrast of values associated with the
hoy of 1950 and the ayer of the 1930s.53 Some of these evaluative con
trasts referred to the concrete social changes associated with better
social welfare, improved wages and good union organisation. Yet,
others spoke to a wider, more personal social realm outside improve
ments in the world of the production line, the wage packet or the
union. These suggest strongly that the década infame was experienced
by many workers as a time of profound collective and individual frus
tration and humiliation.
While we lack a comprehensive account of the elements which made
up the social universe of the working class in the pre-Perön period, the
evidence of anecdote, personal testimony, popular cultural forms and
working-class biography nevertheless can provide us with suggestive
fragments of a whole picture. The harsh conditions and discipline attes
ted to by most observers of the period evidently had an impact in the
wider working-class community. Cipriano Reyes notes, for example,
in his memoirs of his organising experiences in the meatpacking plants
of Berisso in the 1930s and 1940s that ‘the company was the master of
the lives and dwellings of its workers . .. when a workman didn’t pay
26 The background
his debts the tradesman went to see the personel chief of the frigorifico
and the offender was fired or suspended. The vigilance was incredible;
everything was controlled\54
This sort of control was probably most fierce in working-class com
munities dominated by a single large concern, such as the meatpacking
plants. Nevertheless, the wider social implications arising from such a
situation of employer dominance were not confined to the extreme case
of the company town. Angel Perelman remembers leaving school at ten
in order to enter a metal-working workshop in the Federal Capital
where he worked ‘without any fixed hours . .. the time we finished
was fixed by the boss . . . the sum total of happiness for a working-
class family consisted in keeping your job*. The 1930s were, he remem
bers, ‘the era of the desperate, the ingenious and the petty theft’.55
Another writer, commenting on the wider implications of the labour
situation in the same era observed that: ‘Fear of unemployment in this
period led to humiliation. You had to be quiet, not talk. The lack of ele
mental defensive actions led to a moral decline, to cynicism. Within the
factory the worker was alone, deprived of all social consciousness.*56
Although such sweeping generalisations about moral decline and cyni
cism being characteristic of working-class attitudes in the 1930s need to
be treated with caution, there is other evidence which tends to point in a
similar direction.
Some of the most suggestive of this evidence is to be gleaned from
popular cultural forms and in particular the tango. The social universe
depicted in the tangos of the 1930s was universally bleak. The tra
ditional themes of tango are still present - the betrayal of love, the
nostalgia for a simpler past centred on an idyllic recreation of the barrio
or arrabaly the affirmation of the virtues of valour and courage - but to
this has now been added, in some of the most popular and significant
tangos, a wider social context. In the tangos of Enrique Santos Discé-
polo, in particular, the impossibility of a meaningful relationship be
tween a man and a woman has come to symbolise the impossibility of
any social relationship which is not based on greed, egotism and a total
lack of moral scruples in a world based on injustice and deceit. A crucial
figure in many of Discépolo’s tangos is the gilito embanderado - the
naive little man, humiliated by poverty and society, who still has il
lusions that he can survive in the world while being morally honest and
decent or, more ingenuously still, that he can effect some change in an
unjust world.57 The object of the tango then becomes to disabuse him of
his illusions by confronting him with a reality where ‘N ot even God
saves those who are lost.*58 The tone is one of bitterness and resig-
nation. The popular wisdom about social life embodied in the narrative
recommends an adoption of the dominant values of egotism and immo
rality. At its most extreme this implied an understanding —if not ap
proval - of the attraction for the poor of the logic of the mala vida -
prostitution, pimping and crime.59 The alternative was a resigned ac
ceptance or ‘an obstinate silence* for those who could not conform to
this dominant social ethos.60
N ow evidently care must be taken in drawing conclusions about
working-class attitudes from tango and other popular cultural forms of
the period. Tango, for example, was increasingly a commercialised art
form whose connection with the working-class barrio was very
tenuous by the 1930s. What reached the general public was largely de
termined by record companies and commercial success and failure de
pended on the reception in the wider consumer market and the theatres
and music halls of downtown Buenos Aires. It seems likely, too, that
the bohemian element which had always been a crucial part of tango
was given greater prominence as tango lyricists came more and more
from the urban lower middle class. Certainly, the desperate lament of
Discépolo’s great tango, ‘Cambalache*, written in 1935, that ‘Every
thing is equal, nothing is better*; it’s the same to be a jack ass as a great
professor* rings with the educated middle class’s disenchantment with
society’s failure to recognise true merit. The lyrics of the década
infame lack, too, some of the optimism and social engagement found in
some of the tangos of an earlier era. Yet the immense popularity of
these tangos among the working class of Buenos Aires seems to attest to
the fact that whatever the manipulations of the culture industry, what
ever the caveats we place on the reading of working-class consciousness
directly from the lyrics of tango, they did respond to certain attitudes
and experiences recreated in tango which they recognised as authentic
to themselves and their experience.
„ However, even if we recognise the suggestiveness of such evidence
we must also recognise that cynicism, apathy or resignation were not
the only responses available to workers. Luis Danussi who would
become, after 1955, a leader of the print workers’s union found when he
first arrived in Buenos Aires in 1938 a city which was ‘tumultuous and
possessed a frantic union activity, offering a broad field for action;
national congresses, zonal, municipal congresses of workers and
unions* according to his biographers.61 The militant working-class cul
ture characteristic of an earlier epoch was still present. This culture was
centred around the existence of ‘unions, atheneums, libraries, the dis
tribution of pamphlets, papers, reviews, leaflets and books; demon-
28 The background
strations, committees for the release of political prisoners, theatre
groups, cooperatives, communities and attempts at a solidarity life
style. Also campaigns were carried out against alcoholism, tobacco,
picnics were organised, lectures discussed and the spirit of mutual aid
inculcated.*62 Elements of this sort of traditional militant culture shared
by socialists, communists, anarchists and syndicalists alike still
flourished. They found an expression in the numerous committees
formed in the 1930s to aid the Spanish Republicans, and they were still a
living presence in unions such as the print workers which Luis Danussi
entered.
Danussi himself had an anarchist background before arriving in
Buenos Aires, but workers from outside this culture could be attracted
by it and use it as a channel to express their resentment at exploitation
and as part of their search for political solutions. Angel Perelman notes,
for example, that:
1 learned about capitalist èxploitation and class struggle first in that factory
rather than in the books ... at the age of fourteen, and with already four years
as a worker I couldn’t help but be interested in politics. How could I not have
been interested? There were many demonstrations by the unemployed. Some
left-wing parties protested against the reigning misery. Union meetings ...
brought together the most militant and determined workers. I began to attend
all sorts of meetings and acts.63
Other evidence, too, suggests an increase in union activity and attend
ance at union meetings in the late 1930s and early 1940s as unemploy
ment decreased, industry expanded and the union movement recovered
somewhat from the decline of the years following the coup of 1930.
Union membership responded to an improved national and inter
national climate, increasing by some 10% between 1941 and 1945.64
Yet this positive organisational and collective response to the con
ditions of the pre-1943 period does not seem to have been the predomi
nant one. Evidently there was a wide spectrum of working-class
experience and response. The working-class militants themselves
recognised, however, that the militant culture of the union or ideologi
cal grouping touched only a minority of the working class. Danussi*s
biographers stress that ‘to open up the road for union organisation was
enormously difficult, in many respects because of police and employer
repression, but what represented an almost insuperable obstacle to
overcome was the indifference and disbelief of the workers themselves,
reluctant to organise in defence of their own interests*.65
Something of the feeling of impotence and resignation which we may
suggest characterised the response of many workers to the experience
of the pre-1943 period can be found in the personal testimony of the
non-militant. The following two excerpts from such testimony are
offered in an attempt to convey the essence of this feeling. The first
comes from a worker who had worked in the ports along the Parana
River, particularly in the port of Rosario:
Q u estion : What were the thirties like for you?
D o n R am iro: Well life was very hard back then ... working people weren’t
worth anything and we got no respect from those who controlled everything.
You had to know your place and keep in line. I used to vote for the Radicals in
the twenties but after 1930 things got really bad. The conservative bosses ran
the whole show. On election day I would go down to the town hall to vote but
I couldn’t get in ... You see I was known as someone they couldn’t trust so
they would stop me voting. By law they couldn’t, but that was a joke, what was
the law back then? There would be a group of them, heavies, paid by the local
conservative committee ... everyone knew them ... and they would block
the doorway when you wanted to go in. You could see their guns bulging
under their jackets.
Q u estion: You mean they would use force to stop you voting? They would
threaten you?
D o n R am iro: No. They never did that openly ... not to me at least, they
didn’t have to ... you knew you would have to pay for it somehow if you
went against them. It was a sort of game for them.
Q u estion: So what did you do?
D o n R am iro: What could you do? Nothing. You’d go home. Complain maybe
to your friends about those bastards. If you made a fuss they would get you
one way or another and it wouldn’t do any good anyway. You were nothing to
them. But later with Peron that all changed. I voted for him.
Q u estion : How did it change?
D o n R am iro: Well, with Peron we were all machos.66
The second excerpt comes from a younger worker from Buenos Aires
who entered the workforce in the late 1930s:
L autaro: One thing I remember about the thirties was the way you were
treated. You felt you didn’t have rights to anything, everything seemed to be a
favour they did for you through the church or some charity or if you went and
begged the local political boss he’d help you get medicine or eet into a hospital.
Another thing I remember about the thirties is that I always felt strange when I
went to the city, downtown Buenos Aires - like you didn’t belong there, which
was stupid but you felt that they were looking down on you, that you weren’t
dressed right. The police there treated you like animals too.
Q u estion : Were unions or politics important to you at that time?
L au taro: Well, I voted for the socialists usually. My brother was more
interested in them, though I always thought that they were at least honest. But
I never thought that it would do any good. The same really with unions. We
didn’t have a union in the shops where I worked - it must have been in the early
forties, before Peron. We had plenty to complain about but I don’t recall that
we thought seriously about the union. That was just the way things were, you
30 The background
just had to put up with it ... with everything, their damn arrogance, the way
they treated you. Some of the activists my brother hung out with wanted to
change that but they were exceptions I think. Not many workers thought of
being heroes then.6"
Private experience and public discourse

It is against the background of this working-class experience of the pre-
x943 period that the profounder social impact of Peronism must be
considered. With the crisis of the traditional order inaugurated by the
military coup of 1943 far more was challenged than the political and in
stitutional authority of the conservative elite. By 1945 political crisis
had provoked, and was itself compounded by, a questioning of a whole
set of social assumptions concerning social relationships, forms of
deference and largely tacit understandings about ‘the natural order of
things*, ‘the sense of limits*, of what could and could not be legiti
mately questioned and spoken. In this sense Peronism*s power ulti
mately lay in its capacity to give public utterance to what had until then
been internalised, lived as private experience. As Pierre Bourdieu has
written:
Private experiences undergo nothing less than change o f state when they recog
nise themselves in the p u b lic o b jec tiv ity of an already constituted discourse, the
objective sign of recognition of their right to be spoken and to be spoken
publicly. ‘Words wreck havoc,* says Sartre, ‘when they find a name for what
had up till then been lived namelessly.*68
It is surely in this context that the fragments presented in the preced
ing section acquire their significance. In particular we can appreciate
the image of silence which runs through them: ‘You have to be silent,
not talk*; ‘an obstinate silence*; or Don Ramiro’s response when asked
what he did about the power of the political bosses, ‘Nothing. You*d go
home. Complain maybe to friends.’ Peronist discourse’s ability to ar
ticulate these unformulated experiences was the basis of its truly hereti
cal power. Now there were other heretical discourses - in the sense of
offering alternatives to establishment orthodoxy - present in the form
of socialist, communist and radical rhetoric. However, as we have seen,
these were unable to acquire unchallenged authority as valid expres
sions of working-class experience. Peronism had the enormous advan
tage over these other political forces of being an ‘already constituted
discourse* articulated from a position of state power, and this vastly
increased the legitimacy it bequeathed on the experiences it expressed.
The heretical social power Peronism expressed was reflected in its use
of language. Terms expressive of notions of social justice, fairness,
decency —whose expression had been silenced (or ridiculed as in tango)
—were now to become central to the new language of power. More than
this, though, we find that terms which had previously been symbolic of
working-class humiliation and explicit lack of status in a deeply status
conscious society now acquired diametrically opposite connotations
and values. The most famous example is clearly the implications
attached to the word descamisado (shirtless one). The word had been
used originally as an epithet by anti-Peronists prior to the election of
1946 to refer to Peron *s working-class supporters.69 The explicit con
notation of social, and hence political and moral, inferiority was based
on a criteria of social worth which took one of the most evident signs of
working-class status - work clothes - and treated that as a self-evident
badge of inferiority. Peronism took the term and inverted its symbolic
significance, turning it into an affirmation of working-class value. This
inversion was magnified by the attachment of the descamisados in of
ficial rhetoric to the figure of Eva Peron, their designated protectress.70
Perhaps more significantly still we find terms current in the pre-1943
period to refer even more scornfully to the working class now being
transformed, inverted, in a similar fashion. Negro in general usage
referred to inhabitants from the interior of the country and often had
clear ethnic, pejorative, connotations. The traditional elite had disre
spectfully referred to Yrigoyen’s supporters as los negreros radicales.71
With the mass influx of internal migrants to the industry of Buenos
Aires in the 1930s the word was commonly used as synonymous with
manual workers and negrada was used as a generic equivalent of prolet
ariat. The connotations were unmistakable: una negra meant in port-
eno slang a woman of ‘low condition’, negrear meant to pick up
such women for sexual purposes. As José Gobello notes in his Diccion-
, ario Lunfardo, all but one of the variants of negro carry the strong sense
of inferiority and disrespect.72 The use of negrada as a synoym for the
proletariat of the 1930s thus had a strong social symbolism which was at
the root of its use by anti-Peronist forces. La negrada de Peron, las
cabecitas negras, were frequent terms of derision used by Perön’s pol
itical opponents from the mid 1940s on. Their incorporation into the
language of Peronism conferred on them a new status. The fact that la
negrada found expression and affirmation in this public discourse
meant that a range of experiences normally associated with the term -
and which by being so designated had been ruled illegitimate,
unworthy of concern and hence condemned to be suffered silently, in
ternalised or expressed obliquely in certain anguished forms of popular
32 The background
culture - could now be spoken and enter into the realm of public dis
cussion, social concern and hence political action.
Something of this heretical social meaning was apparent in the vast
upsurge of working-class mobilisation which stretched from 17 O c
tober 1945 until the election victory of February 1946. This mobilis
ation demonstrated workers* capacity to mobilise and defend their
perceived interests. In addition, however, it also expressed a more dif
fuse social challenge to accepted forms of social hierarchy and symbols
of authority. This was particularly noticeable during the demonstration
of 17 October. While most attention has been directed to the ultimate
political object of the demonstration - the personal figure of Perön and
his release from confinement - the mobilisation itself, and the forms it
took, themselves suggest an ampler social significance. Most sensitive
observers of the event have agreed on the dominant tone of irreverence
and ironic good humour among the demonstrators on that day. Felix
Luna has summarised the atmosphere as one resembling ‘a great fiesta,
of carnival groups, of candomblé*.73 The communist press spoke dis
paragingly of clans with aspecto de murga, which took part in the dem
onstration.74 The use of the word murga is interesting since in popular
usage it referred to groups who at carnival and other festivals dressed up
and went around singing, dancing and playing instruments. While such
behaviour was acceptable within the strict limits of carnival, and re
stricted to working-class barrios, its breaking out of these confines in a
demonstration with a clear political content represented a symbolic
subversion of accepted codes of behaviour and deference for the work
ing class.
An important part of this subversion related to the area in which such
behaviour was taking place - to implicit notions of spatial hierarchy. As
the irreverent crowds moved out of the working-class suburbs of the
outer limit of the Federal Captial or crossed the Puente Alsina from
Avellaneda and beyond, and converged on the central area and the
Plaza de Mayo in front of the presidential palace, they violated such
notions. The behaviour of the workers as they moved through the
wealthier suburbs compounded the blasphemy implicit in such a viol
ation. The ditties they sang became increasingly insulting and ridicul
ing of the wealthy, the gente decente (decent folk), oiporteno society.
One of the many refrains directed at the puzzled onlookers of
the Barrio Norte as they watched the emergence of the ‘invisible
Argentina*75 under their balconies went: ‘Get off the corner
you mad oligarch, your mother doesn’t love you and nor does
Perön.*76
Peronism and the working class, 1943-H 33
The fact that the culmination of the demonstration was the Plaza de
Mayo was itself significant. Up until 1945 the Plaza in front of the
presidential palace had been very much the territory of the gente
decente and workers who ventured there without jacket or tie were not
infrequently moved on or even arrested. A much published photograph
taken on 17 October shows workers with shirt sleeves rolled up, sitting
and bathing their feet in the fountains of the plaza. The symbolism im
plicit here can be readily appreciated if contrasted with the feeling of
unease expressed by Lautaro whenever he visited the central area of the
Federal Capital in the years prior to Perön.
Much of this irreverence, blasphemy, dancing and reappropriation of
public space characteristic of 17 October and the election campaign
which followed would seem to constitute a form of ‘counter-theatre*,
of ridicule and abuse against the symbolic authority and pretensions of
the Argentine elite.77 The result was, certainly, a puncturing of elite
self-assurance. It also represented a recovery of working-class pride
and self-esteem, encapsulated in Don Ramiro’s pithy summary of the
change wrought by Perön: ‘Well, with Perön we were all machos.*
Perhaps above all it marked an affirmation of the working class’s exist
ence and a defiant end to silence and privatisation of grievance. This
mixture of symbolic meanings is astutely captured in Felix Luna’s rec
ollection of his own memories of 17 October as he and his student
friends, all anti-Peronist radicals, watched the columns of workers
march through the city:
Well, there they were. As if they wanted to show all their power, so that
nobody could doubt that they really existed. There they were all over the city,
shouting in groups which seemed to be the same group multiplied by
hundreds. We looked at them from the side walk, with a feeling akin to com
passion. From where did they come? So they really existed? So many of them?
So different from us? Had they really come on foot from those suburbs whose
1names made up a vague unknown geography, a terra incognita through which
we had never wandered ... During all those days we had made the rounds of
the places where they spoke of preoccupations like ours. We had moved
through a known map, familiar: the faculty, Recoleta for the burial of Salmon
Feijoo, the Plaza San Martin, the Casa Radical. Everything up till then was
coherent and logical; everything seemed to support our own beliefs. But that
day when the voices began to ring out and the columns of anonymous earth-
coloured faces began to pass by we felt something tremble which until that day
had seemed unmoveable.78
The limits o f heresy: the ambivalence o f Peronism*s social legacy

It would be misleading, however, to leave the characterisation of
34 The background
Peronism’s social impact on the working class at this level. Peronism in
power did not regard the working-class ebullience and spontaneity of
the period from October 1945 to February 1946 in the same favourable
light as it had done when it had been a contender for power. Indeed,
much of the Peronist state’s efforts between 1946 and its demise in 1955
can be viewed as an attempt to institutionalise and control the heretical
challenge it had unleashed in the earlier period and to absorb this chal
lenge within a new state-sponsored orthodoxy. Viewed in this light
Peronism was, in a certain sense, a passive, demobilising social experi
ence for workers. It stressed increasingly in its official rhetoric the con
trolled, limited mobilisation of workers under the aegis of the state.
Perön himself frequently referred to his concern with the dangers of
‘unorganised masses’, and in the ideal Peronist scenario unions acted
very much as instruments of the state in both mobilising and control
ling workers. This cooptative side of the Peronist experience was
reflected in the fundamental slogan addressed from the state to workers
in the Perön era exhorting them to go peacefully ‘From home to work,
and from work to home.*
Formal Peronist ideology reflected this concern. It preached the need
to harmonise the interests of capital and labour within the framework
of a benevolent state, in the interest of the nation and its economic de
velopment. Perön, in his May Day speech of 1944, had said, ‘We seek
to surpass the class struggle, replacing it by a just agreement between
workers and employers, based on a justice that springs from the state.*79
Peronist ideology distinguished between exploitative, inhuman capital
and progressive, socially responsible capital committed to the develop
ment of the national economy. Workers had nothing to fear from the
latter: ‘International capital is an instrument of exploitation, but
national capital is an instrument of welfare; the first represents misery,
the second prosperity.’80 Peronist ideology stressed, too, as a logical
extension of this premise that the interests of the nation and its econ
omic developments were to be identified with the workers and their
unions. Workers were seen as sharing with national, non-exploitative
capital a common interest in defence of national development against
the depradations of international capital and its internal allies, the oli
garchy, who wanted to prevent Argentina’s independent development.
In the context of our discussion concerning Peronism’s social impli
cations for workers, and its success in channelling and absorbing what
we have called its heretical social potential, several factors need to be
borne in mind. The Peronist state clearly did have considerable success
in controlling the working class, socially and politically, and while class
conflict was in no sense abolished, and the idyll of social harmony
portrayed by official propaganda was not realised, relations between
capital and labour did improve. The feared plebeian vengeance of the
porteno sans culotte, apparently presaged in the social and political tur
moil of 1945/6, did not materialise. Several reasons for this success can
be suggested. The working class’s ability to satisfy its material aspir
ations within the parameters set by the state is one; the personal
prestige of Perön another. The ability of the state and its related cultu
ral, political and ideological apparatus to promote and inculcate
notions of class harmony and common interest must also be weighed.
We must be careful, however, not to analyse this solely in terms of ma
nipulation and social control. The efficacy of official ideology depen
ded crucially on its ability to tie in with working-class perceptions and
experience. Peronist rhetoric, like any other, drew its authority ulti
mately from its capacity to tell its audience what they wanted to hear.
As an example of what we mean we may take the treatment of the
Day of the Workers, 1 May, in official Peronist rhetoric. A document
published in 1952 by a state agency, entitled Emancipation o f the
Workers, was typical of official efforts in this direction. At its centre
piece is a collection of photographs, with a written commentary under
each. The first photos show workers gathering to celebrate Labour Day
with red flags and black-and-red anarchist banners raised high. Moun
ted police are visible in the photos. The commentary tells the story:
‘Labour day as it was formerly celebrated in the country; taking part in
the celebrations signified real courage.’ ‘The police, strongly armed and
ready for anything, hindered workers from proclaiming their just as
pirations.* The third photo bears witness to a ‘sad account of the tragic
happenings of Labour Day of thirty years ago*. The photos show those
wounded or killed by the police. The next three photos are in explicit
^contrast and carry the moral of the story. They show a huge May Day
demonstration in the Plaza de Mayo, full of union banners but now no
red flags. ‘In the new Argentina created by General Perön, 1 May is
joyfully celebrated by a united people.’ ‘Labour Day is always a popu
lar event of the greatest importance in Argentina.’ The photo shows
crowds of workers on their way to Government House to listen to a
speech by Perön.81
This piece is evidently illustrative of Peronism’s capacity to absorb
and appropriate, and neutralise, the symbols of older rival class tra
ditions. More importantly for our discussion is the way in which this
appropriation involved altered meanings. The point can scarcely be
missed: the symbolic contrast in the text is unavoidable. Far from being
36 The background
an affirmation of an identity forged in class conflict, a symbol of
struggle and the holding fast for the sake of principle as it had been for
an earlier generation of militants, May Day in the pre-Perön era now
symbolised sadness, pain and impotence etched on the bandaged faces
as they stare out of the text. On the other hand, May Day under Perön
means happy faces walking toward the presidential palace, an atmos
phere of tranquillity and harmony, an absence of panic, no police and
no injuries. Now, clearly, this is government propaganda but the point
is that its efficacy depended partly at least on its ability to tap a recep
tiveness to its message among workers.
Such a receptiveness existed among Argentine workers. Its roots, we
may suggest, lie, once more, in the working-class experience of the
pre-1943 era. The lessons of that experience were an important theme
of popular culture in the Peronist years. Goldar summarises the treat
ment of the issue in popular fiction in the following way: ‘The Day of
the Workers during the década infame will be of struggle, repression,
internationalist slogans, impotent rebellion; “your hunger, the hatred
of those people, your misery, the waiting, the dirty and tom clothes,
the worn out coat, the hoarse voices, struggling only so that life would
be nothing more than tiredness and old dreams” .*82 In contrast to this
picture of conflict and pain associated with May Day before Perön, the
image associated with the post-1946 era will be one of tranquillity,
where 1 May will be a fiesta of labour and the bloody meetings will
become fading memories of the past.
Similar attitudes to the symbols of the class struggles of the past can
be found in personal testimony. A long-time activist prominent in the
founding of the Partido Laborista, explaining why he became involved
in politics in 1945, said: T decided to collaborate in politics so that the
working people, my class, could obtain the right to live better without
the danger of having to confront tragedies like Semana Trâgica, the
massacre of Patagonia, 1921, Gualeguaychu, Berisso, Avellaneda,
Mendoza and many other cases too numerous to mention.’83
We should be careful not to interpret such testimony solely in terms
of working-class incorporation. Such fragments clearly do represent a
yearning for social advancement without the pain of class conflict, for
stability and routine in comparison with the arbitrariness and impo
tence associated with the earlier period. Though such a yearning could,
as we shall see, coexist with a recognition of the reality of a lack of har
mony. Moreover, the bedrock on which such attitudes rested—what
gave them, and the official rhetoric which reflected them, credibility -
was the notion of dignity and regained self respect. Time and again this
seems to surface as the irreducible, minimal social meaning of the
Peronist experience for workers. Enrique Dickmann, at more than
eighty years of age, with more than fifty years as a militant and leader of
the Socialist Party, attempted, finally, reluctantly to come to terms
with what Peronism had meant for the working class :
I have spoken to many workers in the Federal Capital and in the interior, and
each one says, ‘Now I am something, I am someone.* And I asked a worker his
opinion and in his ingenuous simplicity he said this to me: ‘So that you can
understand the change produced by this government I will tell you that when
in the old Department of Labour we had to discuss some question with the
boss, the boss would be seated and I, the worker, would be standing; now I,
the worker, am seated and the boss is the one who is standing.*84
In summarising our analysis of the nature of the Peronist experience
for Argentine workers in the 1943-55 period we must start by stating the
obvious: Peronism marked a critical conjuncture in the emergence and
formation of the modem Argentine working class. Its existence and
sense of identity as a coherent national force, both socially and politi
cally, can be traced to the Perôn era. The legacy acquired during this
period was not to be easily shed after Perön’s fall from power. This
legacy was not, however, a straightforward one. Its impact on workers
was both socially and politically complex. We have suggested, for
example, that its appeal for workers cannot be reduced simply to a basic
class instrumentalism. An adequate attention to Peronism’s specifically
political appeal would, we have suggested, uncover a particular politi
cal discourse which, while emphasising the righting of social and econ
omic inequities, linked these to a vision of citizenship and the working
class’s role in society. This vision was expressed in a distinct rhetoric
and political style of particular appeal to Argentine workers.
There are several implications to be drawn from this analysis. First,
Perön’s support among workers was not solely based on their class ex
perience within the factories. It was also a political allegiance generated
by a particular form of political mobilisation and discourse. Clearly the
two bases for mobilisation should not be counterposed - certainly not
in the form of the classic dichotomy between ‘old* and ‘new*, ‘tra
ditional’ and ‘modern’ working class. A political rhetoric needs to
speak to perceived class needs if it is to have success in politically mobil
ising workers, but this does not exhaust the range of its appeal. As
Sylvia Sigal and Juan Carlos Torre have commented, in Latin
America the public plaza rather than the factory has frequently been
the main point of constitution of the working class as a political force.85
This raises a related issue. The working class did not come to Peronism
38 The background
already fully formed and simply adopt Peronism and its rhetoric as the
most conveniently available vehicle to satisfy its material needs. In an
important sense the working class was constituted by Perön; its self-
identification as a social and political force within national society was,
in part at least, constructed by Peronist political discourse which
offered workers viable solutions for their problems and a credible
vision of Argentine society and their role within it. This was evidently a
complex process, involving for some workers a re-constitution of their
sense of identity and political loyalty as they abandoned established
allegiances and identities. The construction of the working class did not
necessarily imply the manipulation and passivity associated with Ger-
mani’s powerful image of masas disponibles against which so much of
the literature on Peronism has been directed.86 A two-way process of
interaction was clearly involved and if the working class was partly
constituted by Peronism then Peronism was itself also in part a creation
of the working class.
Socially, too, the heritage bequeathed to the working class by the
Peronist experience was a profoundly ambivalent one. Certainly, for
example, Peronist rhetoric preached and official policy increasingly
sought to realise an identification with, and incorporation of, the work
ing class into the state. This implied, as we have suggested, working-
class passivity. The official Peronist vision of the working class’s role
tended to be that of a profoundly soporific idyll in which workers
would move contentedly from a harmonious work environment to the
union vacation resort and from there to the state dependencies which
would resolve their personal and social problems. Beyond the state
Perön himself would be the ultimate guarantor of this vision.
Similarly, the union movement emerged from this period with a
deeply imbedded reformism. This rested on a conviction of the need to
achieve conciliation with employers and to satisfy its members’ needs
by establishing an intimate relationship with the state. This relationship
implied a commitment on the part of the union leadership to the notion
of controlling and limiting working-class activity within the limits
established by the state and to acting as a political conduit into the
working class. In this sense Peronism could be considered to have
played a prophylactic role in preempting the emergence of autonomous
activity and organisation.
Yet the Peronist era also bequeathed an immensely increased sense of
class solidity and potential national importance to the working class.
Moreover, the array of social welfare legislation and labour law did rep
resent a massive achievement in terms of working-class rights and rec-
ognition; an achievement which reflected labour mobilisation and class
consciousness and not simply passive acceptance of the state’s largesse.
The development of a centralised, mass union movement - no matter
how much under the aegis of the state it might be —inevitably con
firmed the existence of workers as a social force within capitalism. This
meant that at the level of the union movement, for all the success of an
increasingly bureaucratised leadership in acting as the mouthpiece of
the state, conflicting class interests did break through and working-
class interests were articulated by this union movement. There was
always a limit to how far the integration of the unions within the Peron-
ist state could be relied upon to ensure the acceptance of policies which
were not perceived to be in the workers* interests. In general, the union
leadership was remarkably faithful in fulfilling its role for the state, but
in return the state, and fundamentally this meant Perön himself, had to
provide at least the minimum basis of a quid pro quo. The relationship
was not that of a diktat but, rather, that of a bargain which had to be
negotiated.
Similarly, the weight of a formal philosophy of conciliation and class
harmony, an ideology which emphasised values crucial to the repro
duction of capitalist social relations, was considerable. However, the
effectiveness of such an ideology was limited in everyday practice by
the development of a culture which affirmed ideas of workers’ rights
within society at large and within the workplace in particular.
Peronism aspired to be a viable hegemonic alternative for Argentine
capitalism, as a promoter of economic development based on the social
and political integration of the working class. In this respect compari
sons of Peronism with the New Deal policies of Roosevelt, and the de
velopment of welfare state capitalism in Western Europe after 1945
clearly have merit, in that they all to varying degrees marked the confir
mation of the working class’s ‘economic civil rights’, while at the same
time confirming, and indeed strengthening, the continued existence of
capitalist production relations. At the same time, however, Peronism in
an important sense defined itself, and was defined by its working-class
constituency, as a movement of political and social opposition, as a
denial of the dominant elite’s power, symbols and values. It remained,
in a fundamental way, a potentially heretical voice, giving expression to
the hopes of the oppressed both within the factory and beyond, as a
claim for social dignity and equality.
The tensions arising from this ambiguous legacy were considerable.
Ultimately we may suggest that the most fundamental of these centred
on the conflict between Peronism’s meaning as a social movement and
40 The background
its functional needs as a specific form of state power. In this sense to
speak of Peronism as a monolithic movement obscures more than it
clarifies. For those who were aspirants to positions of power in the
administrative bureaucracy and the political machine Peronism was em
bodied in a set of formal policies and institutions. For employers who
supported Perön it represented a risky gamble of an expanded internal
market, state-sponsored economic incentives and a guarantee against
radical control of labour, in return for which they had to accept a work
ing class with a greatly increased institutional power and sense of its
own weight. For sectors of the middle class Peronism represented, per
haps, greater opportunities for jobs within an expanded state sector.
For the mass of Peron’s working-class support formal social policies
and economic benefits were important but not finally definitive of
Peronism’s import. Peronism was, perhaps, most enduringly for them
a vision of a more decent society in which they recognised for them
selves a vital role, a vision couched in a language with which they could
identify. It represented, too, a political culture of opposition, of rejec
tion of all that had gone before - politically, socially, and economically;
a sense of blasphemy against the norms and self-esteem of the trad
itional elite.
Now, for those who controlled the political and social apparatus of
Peronism this oppositional culture was a burden, since it meant that
Peronism was unable to establish itself as a viable hegemonic option for
Argentine capitalism. They recognised the social and political mobilis
ing potential inherent in the working class’s adherence to Peronism,
and they used this as a bargaining counter with rival contenders for pol
itical power - a sort of après moi le déluge tactic. Finally, however,
they had to recognise that this was akin to riding the tiger. Certainly the
dominant economic and social forces in Argentine society, who had in
itially been forced to tolerate Peronism, recognised by the early 1950s
the danger inherent in such ambivalence. From the point of view of
Peronism as a social movement, however, this oppositional element
represented an enormous advantage since it gave to Peronism a dy
namic substratum that would survive long after peculiarly favourable
economic and social conditions had faded, and which even the increas
ing sclerosis of ten years of sycophancy and corruption could not
undermine. It would be this substratum which would form the basis of
rank-and-file resistance to the post-195 5 regimes and lay the basis for
the reassertion of Peronism as the dominant force within the Argentine
workers* movement.
PART TWO
The Peronist Resistance, 1955-8

2
The survival of Peronism:

resistance in the factories
The unofficial committee presented itself to Captain Tropea, the inter-

ventor, and he told us that these men would definitely not return to
work in the frigorifico. This was at 8.50 a.m. At 9 the plant stopped
spontaneously, 100%. And the strike lasted six days. And in the end they
had to bring those com paneros from Villa Devoto in official government
cars and reinstate them in their jobs.
Sebastian Borro
They didn’t know how to reply... they were the sons of a paternalistic
government and their father had left them... they were like orphans.
Alberto Belloni
‘N i vencedores, ni vencidos’: the Lonardi interregnum

The collapse o f compromise: Lonardi and the Peronist union leadership
The first government of the Revoluciôn Libertadora, that of General
Eduardo Lonardi, represented an interregnum in the relationship be
tween the Peronist union movement and the non-Peronist state auth
orities. After adopting an initial hostile stance which had led the
secretary general of the CGT, Hugo di Pietro, to proclaim that ‘every
worker will fight with arms and those means he has to hand*,1the CGT
in practice made no attempt to mobilise workers in support of Peron*s
regime. The day following his bellicose statement, Di Pietro was calling
on the workers to remain calm and denouncing ‘some groups who are
trying to create disturbances*.2 The CGT*s attitude was in line with
Peron*s own fatalistic reaction to the coup and, with the virtual abdica
tion of the political wing of the movement, the CGT certainly showed
no inclination to stand alone and adopt an aggressive stance toward the
rebels. With the swearing in of Lonardi as the provisional president on
23 September, and the conciliatory tone of his inaugural speech with its
theme of ‘Ni vencedores, ni vencidos* (neither victors, nor van
quished), the stage was set for a seven-week attempt at working out a
43
44 The Peronist Resistance i9SS~8
rapprochement between the Peronist union movement and the first
non-Peronist government.
On the 24 September the CGT responded to Lonardi’s speech by
emphasising ‘the need to maintain the most absolute calm . .. each
worker must be at his post on the road that lçads to harmony*.3 The fol
lowing day a delegation was received by Lonardi who assured them of
his government’s respect for the measures of social justice attained and
for the integrity of the CGT and its member organisations. The general
atmosphere of restrained benevolence was reinforced by the appoint
ment of Luis B. Cerrutti Costa as Minister of Labour; Cerrutti Costa
had until that time been the chief legal adviser of the Union Obrera
Metalürgica. One of his first acts was to instruct the Direccion
Nacional de Seguridad to reopen the union locals which had been
closed down or occupied by anti-Peronists. This issue was, indeed, the
major obstacle to the fragile modus vivendi being constructed.
By the end of September the unions of print workers, railroad
workers, bank workers, petroleum, meatpacking and garment workers
had all been abandoned by Peronists in face of attacks from armed
groups of anti-Peronists. These armed groups, known as civil com
mandos, consisted mainly of Socialist and Radical party activists. They
had played a prominent part in the rebellion against Peron and saw
themselves as a civilian militia which would be a guarantee against any
Peronist resurgence. As such they tended to receive support from sec
tions of the armed forces in their attacks on union locals and head
quarters. It was in order to preempt the growing pressure on Lonardi
and Cerrutti Costa by these sectors of the armed forces who gave sup
port to the civil commandos that the CGT issued a communique on 3
October calling on the government to end the armed occupations that
were occurring in some unions, and, at the same time, reaffirming its
desire to have democratic elections as soon as possible. As a further step
toward defusing the situation the executive council of the CGT re
signed and appointed in its place a provisional triumvirate made up of
Andrés Framini, the leader of the textile workers, Luis Natalini of the
power workers and Dante Viel of the public employees* union.
In a signed agreement made public on 6 October the CGT and the
government committed themselves to holding elections in all unions
within 120 days and to the appointment of interventors by the CGT in
those unions which found themselves in an irregular situation —chiefly
those occupied by anti-Peronists. These interventors would oversee the
election process.4 At this stage the prospects for the future of
The survival o f Peronism 4 5
government/union understanding seemed promising. A number of

union centrals had been returned to Peronist hands. In the case of the
railroad workers the Peronist leadership had personally interviewed
Lonardi after the occupation of their central building and the instal
lation of an anti-Peronist leadership, and he had ordered the reinstate
ment of the former leadership.5 In addition the response of the unions
of the 6 October agreement on elections was immediate and by the fol
lowing day numerous unions had announced the date for their elec
tions. In the following week the number continued to rise, often the
call to elections being accompanied by other measures aimed at drawing
the sting from the anti-Peronist attack. At the very least this often
involved the resignation of the existing leaders. In some unions the
gestures went further; the leadership of the bakery workers’ union, for
example, resolved that all documents and books should be placed at the
disposal of whoever wished to see them.6 In the pasta makers’ union a
committee was established to oversee the election; the committee was
to be made up of different political tendencies and was to carry out a de
tailed investigation of the actions of the previous leadership.7
The anti-Peronist unionists remained less than convinced by these
gestures. Indeed, they were becoming increasingly vociferous in
expressing their anxieties over this process and determined to press the
government for its reversal. Their concern was easy to understand. In a
fundamental sense they were opposed to the Lonardi government’s
entire policy toward the Peronist unions. This opposition was based on
their fundamental attitude toward, and analysis of, Peronism which
will be analysed in another section of this chapter. In the more immedi
ate term, in October 1955 they were opposed to the inauguration of an
electoral process in the unions which would almost certainly lead to the
confirmation of Peronist domination of the individual unions and,
thus, the CGT. They were alarmed by the fact that despite the rash of
resignations of Peronist leaders and the initiation of the election pro
cess, the elections were going to remain under overall Peronist control.
These fears were compounded by the government’s action in agreeing
to the installation of CGT interventors in unions where there was overt
conflict between Peronist and non-Peronist. The unions most affected
by this policy were precisely those in which the anti-Peronist forces
were strongest.
Throughout October socialists, radicals and syndicalists became
increasingly strident in their complaints at the Ministry of Labour’s
failure to bring the Revolucion Libertadora sufficiently to bear on
46 The Peronist Resistance 1955-8
union affairs.8 Moreover, the growing spirit of conciliation seemed to
be enhanced by the CGT*s urging of workers to treat 17 October - the
crucial day in the Peronist calendar - as a normal workday.
In fact, however, the government, and Cerrutti Costa in particular,
were well aware of the anti-Peronist unionists* misgivings, and the con
sequent pressure exerted by those sectors of the government strongly
influenced by them, to abandon their conciliatory policy.9 Responding
to this pressure, on 20 October the Ministry warned many Peronist
unions that had on their own initiative started the election procedure
that they must first have their statutes approved by the Ministry. There
were also a number of attacks still being organised by the ‘civil com
mandos*. In unions where the conflict between Peronist and anti-
Peronist was particularly bitter many of the CGT*s appointed
interventors were effectively unable to take over from the anti-Peronist
groups which had seized control of the union. All this led to a growing
loss of confidence on the part of the Peronist leadership. At a crisis
meeting of more than 300 Peronist union leaders on 26 October Fra-
mini had demanded of Cerrutti Costa the rectification of these viola
tions of the 6 October pact.
Cerrutti Costa*s reply to this was a decree regulating the election
procedure. Essentially the decree removed the authority of all union
leaderships, appointed three interventors in each union to take over
while elections were held, and appointed an administrator of all CGT
goods. The CGT response was to declare a general strike in protest, to
start at midnight, 2 November. At this point the feeling within the
government seemed to be moving inexorably in favour of the hard
liners. Lonardi, himself, was not effectively in control of the govern
ment as the decline in his health became more drastic. Only Cerrutti
Costa and General Bengoa were in favour of avoiding conflict at all
costs. The conciliationist wing was, however, able to achieve a tempor
ary victory in last-minute negotiations with the CGT which averted the
strike.
The agreement represented a considerable compromise on the
government’s part and demonstrated the importance the conciliationist
wing attached to the fragilely constructed union/government modus
vivendi. Essentially it enabled Natalini and Framini to stay at the head
of the CGT. In those unions with no internal conflicts the existing
leaders could stay on and run the union with the aid of Ministry over
seers until the elections. In those with internal problems a Ministry
interventor would run the union until the elections; he was to be
advised by a joint commission of rival tendencies. This crisis convinced
the traditional, liberal wing of the government that only Lonardi’s re
moval from the government, and with him the influence of the concili-
ationist Catholic nationalists, would ensure a thoroughly anti-Peronist
application of the principles of the revolution against Perön.
Although there was no specifically union crisis involved in the events
leading up to Lonardi’s forced resignation on 13 November, the crucial
point of attack of the anti-Lonardi forces continued to be the govern
ment’s policy toward the unions. The radical and socialist press was full
of scarcely veiled appeals to the armed forces to safeguard the democ
racy and liberty won by the overthrow of Perön. A carefully orches
trated campaign in this press continually gave prominence to the
repression experienced by the non-Peronist unionists under Perön and
their opinions on the continued Peronist leadership of the CGT and the
proposed union elections. The basic theme was consistent. The CGT
had to be intervened, the crimes of the Peronists investigated. Diego
Martinez, a leader in the meatpackers’ union prior to 1945, argued that:
‘The whole set must be destroyed, we must dismantle the machine bit
by bit. We have to enlighten consciousness, point out crimes, deals,
fraud of union social funds before we can speak about elections.* The
immediate solution he advocated was ‘the handing over of all organis
ations to democratic trade unionists’.10
In the light of this attitude, the 2 November compromise between
Peronist union leaders and the government confirmed the opinion of
the socialists and radicals that a change of government was needed.
They no longer saw any hope that they could convince the government
of the foolishness of a course of action which would inevitably confirm
the Peronist domination of the unions. With General Aramburu’s as
sumption of the presidency on 13 November persuasion became un
necessary and the first attempt to integrate Peronist unions into a
non-Peronist state collapsed. After renewed attacks from the anti-
Peronist forces on many union locals, and after Aramburu’s failure to
answer a demand for the fulfilment of the 2 November pact, the CGT
declared an unlimited general strike on 14 November. The same day the
new government made the strike illegal and two days later intervened
the CGT and all unions.
D e t e r m i n i n g f a c to r s b e h in d th e b r e a k d o w n : th e e m e rg e n c e o f th e ra n k
and fie
In order to understand the developments of the seven weeks following

the overthrow of Perön we must look behind the surface gloss of agree-
4 8 The Peronist Resistance 1955-8
merits, compromises and conflicts. The guiding factor behind Lon-
ardi’s policy seems clear enough. He was prepared to contemplate on a
general political level a possible Peronist victory at elections called
within a year.11 The only reservation was that it would be a ‘Peronism
purified of the vices that had led it to defeat. For him the only ones who
had been defeated were the venal and corrupt leaders*.12 The Lonardi
sector was quite prepared to countenance continued Peronist domi
nation of the working class and its institutions if, after a brief purge of
those most involved in the corruption of the regime, the unions would
respect the clearly demarcated spheres of government action and rep
resentation of the working class, and restrict their activity to the latter.
The nationalist wing of the opposition to Perön agreed with much of
what Perön had achieved. They viewed Peronism as a bulwark against
communism. With its emphasis on social justice within a framework of
humanised capital, espousing national and communal interests as
opposed to class ones, Peronism appealed to their, largely Catholic
inspired, ideal of social harmony and order. The problem was essen
tially one of limits and excesses. If the unions recognised the need to
stay within their own sphere, and if the corrupt demagoguery of those
most closely compromised with Perön could be erased, then the
Peronist-led unions had an important role to play in post-Perön
Argentina as organs of social control and channels of expression of the
working masses. Indeed, a constant theme of the pro-Peronist press
that remained free in this period was the threat of a communist takeover
of the labour movement if the Peronists were banned from labour ac
tivity.
From the union leaderships* point of view the issue of motivation and
objectives is more complex. Certainly, they were prepared to make
considerable sacrifices to adapt to the new situation. This can be seen in
the way they opposed many spontaneous rank-and-file expressions of
opposition and in the firm way in which they decreed 17 October a
normal working day. Similarly they seem to have gone out of their way
to avoid engaging in any activity which could have been interpreted as
beyond the specifically union sphere of interest. Thus, for example, the
publication of the Prebisch Plan in late October with its proposals
which seemingly ran counter to the whole tenor of the trade unions*
economic philosophy brought no single public statement from the
CGT.
There seemed no reason in principle why a workable modus vivendi
between government and unions could not have been arrived at. It was
not intransigent loyalty to their deposed leader which stood in the way
of such an agreement. It has also been suggested that the union leaders
overplayed their hand and misunderstood the delicate tightrope that

Lonardi and his followers were walking. Bengoa, the Minister of War,
and a leading proponent of conciliation, spoke in his resignation letter
to Lonardi on 8 November of the ‘lack of understanding of certain
groups* which was a major stumbling block to the realisation of Lon-
ardi*s basic theme of ‘neither victors, nor vanquished*.13 But was it a
‘lack of understanding*? Did the union leadership overestimate its own
strength and bargaining position and end up losing everything? Why,
after making the concessions already mentioned, did they not give
more to bolster up Lonardi?
Two factors should be képt in mind in assessing this issue. First, the
fact that the CGT increasingly came to doubt, if not the intentions,
then at least the ability to deliver of Lonardi and his followers. Fra
mings speech at the 26 October crisis meeting with Cerrutti Costa
centred precisely on this issue. Despite Cerrutti*s fine speeches occu
pations of union locals by civil commandos were continuing. The prob
lem was that in many areas Cerrutti was powerless to act. The
nationalist sector of the government did not in practice have sufficient
authority within the police or armed forces to prevent such attacks. The
growing number of arrests of middle-ranking Peronist union officials
presented a similar problem; the sections of {he police and armed forces
who carried out these arrests were a law unto themselves.
This placed the union leadership in a very difficult position since
there were concessions they could not make without weakening the
very minimum basis of their power and they felt that the failure of the
government to control such anti-Peronist activity would inevitably
lead to a growing anarchy within the movement, and an erosion of their
own position to a point where it would plainly be untenable. A line had
to be drawn somewhere on the question of compromises if they were
not to end up agreeing to their own elimination. It was, thus, some
thing of a vicious circle since Cerrutti Costa and the nationalist sector
were militarily and politically too weak to give the practical assurances
that the union leaders needed to convince them that by continually
compromising they were not eroding their position as union leaders.
And, yet, without such concessions from the unions Lonardi and his
supporters got weaker still in military and political terms.
A second, and even more crucial, factor that needs to be taken into
account concerns the activity of the Peronist rank and file. This must be
weighed in any attempt to understand the actions of the Peronist
leadership and the collapse of the Lonardi interregnum. The Peronist
union leadership was by no means free to do as it might have wished in
these months. The extent of rank-and-file resistance to the coup against
jo The Peronist Resistance 19JJ-8
Perön, and the harshness of the response to this resistance, were im
portant determining factors in the events of these months. In spite of Di
Pietro’s disposition to accommodate, the initial reaction of stunned dis
belief at the resignation of Perön soon gave way to a series of spon
taneous demonstrations in the working-class districts of the major
cities. In Buenos Aires, for example, on 23 September a massive dem
onstration which was trying to reach the central area of the Federal
Capital was fired upon by the army and many demonstrators were
wounded. There were also reports of continual small arms fire in the
zone of Avellaneda.14 In Ensenada and Berisso a large number of armed
reinforcements had to be sent to occupy all strategic positions and
points of acceses to the cities.15
Rosario - the ‘capital of Peronism* - presented the most difficulties
for the revolutionary forces. Already, on 24 September the N ew York
Times had reported armoured cars opening fire on demonstrating
workers; Reuters reported scores killed in these actions. This was
clearly an exaggeration since the toll was reduced two days later, but it
is clear that the tension and resistance to the new government in Ros
ario were considerable. Effectively the city had been at a standstill since
the opening of the rebellion on 18 September. From then until the 23rd
there had been continual demonstrations in the city centre by workers
marching from the outer suburbs, in particular from the industrial belt
to the south of the city where many of the large freezing plants were lo
cated. At night there was the continual sound of small arms fire and
bomb explosions. All the factories were at a standstill.16
The difficulties confronting the rebel forces were increased by the
fact that the infantry batallion normally stationed in Rosario, under
General Iniguez, was solidly pro-Perön and had to be confined to
barracks. It was not until the newly victorious rebel batallions from
Santa Fe and Corrientes could be sent on 24 and 25 September that the
new authorities could begin the task of regaining control of the city.
This took several days more. The 24th and 25 th were days of serious
street fighting with the use of trams and cars for barricades.17 Workers
in the railroad workshops declared a general strike and were joined by
meatpackers and mill workers. O n the 27th all bus and train services be
tween Rosario and Buenos Aires were suspended. It was not until the
army physically occupied the whole centre of the city, and issued an
order that anyone found on the streets after 8 p.m. would be shot on
sight, that order was restored.
The reimposition of formal authority by the revolutionary forces did
not mark the end of rank-and-file resistance. Throughout October, as
The survival o f Peronism 5i
the battle for possession of the unions intensified, there were continu
ous wild-cat strikes to protest the attacks of the ‘civil commandos* and
the growing number of arrests. An activist’s account of the atmosphere
in Rosario in mid October is eloquent testimony to the underlying
struggle taking place: ‘The workers on the other hand were bursting
with indignation and they were practically on a war footing, ready to
throw themselves into the struggle at any m om ent. .. Rosario gave the
impression of a city occupied by an enemy, enveloped in an atmosphere
of dumb rebellion, just waiting to explode.*18
Already by late October the embryos of what would later be known
as the Peronist Resistance were appearing. In Santa Fe, for example, a
Frente Emancipadora had already been formed and begun to coordinate
Peronist union opposition.19 The underlying resentment and feeling of
rebellion described above found a channel of expression with the unof
ficial call for a general strike issued by various sectors of Peronism for
the symbolic date of 17 October. Despite the CGT leadership’s order
that this should be a normal working day, large numbers of Peronist
workers in fact ignored this appeal. The New York Times gave a figure
of 33% absenteeism for that day.20 All ports were brought to a standstill
and the navy fruitlessly patrolled the dock areas looking for workers to
coerce back to work.21
Similarly, the strike called by the CGT for 3 November and then
called off was turned by the rank and file into another massive anti-
government demonstration. Key industrial plants throughout the
country were closed down.22 ‘Troublemakers* were assiduously
tracked down. While a CGT claim that some 25,000 delegates were in
prison seems an exaggeration, there is no doubt that the numbers were
such as to considerably exacerbate the resentment and hostility of the
Peronist rank and file toward the new authorities.
The nature of this rank-and-file opposition should be made clear. It
was fundamentally spontaneous, instinctive, confused and leaderless.
A participant in the events of the time has described how he and other
Peronist workers went to ask union leaders at the La Blanca freezing
plant in Avellaneda what were the measures being taken to oppose
the coup against Perön: ‘Instinctively we were trying to defend some
thing we felt we were losing; we could do nothing else but go to our
leaders and see what we could do in our plant, where there were more
than 4000 workers. But the response of the leader was final: Perön is
going on the scrap heap and us with him.’23 This scenario was to be re
peated consistently throughout these two months. The same observer
who described Rosario as having a ‘climate of rebellion* went on to add,
j2 The Peronist Resistance 19$j - 8
‘but one had no idea in what way an insurrection could have been car
ried out, since there was not even a hint of organisation, nor could one
glimpse the existence of any group which might have a certain auth
ority*.24
Embryonic forms of organised resistance were already appearing but
in general the most common channels of response were spontaneous,
atomised initiatives, frequently taking the form of wild-cat strikes.
Where a more generalised focus was at hand, such as 17 October or the
initial CGT strike call of 3 November, then these were seized upon by
the rank and file as means of showing their rejection of the entire pro
cess taking place in Argentina. In the absence of coherent, national
leadership, however, these could scarcely be more than defensive pro
test actions.
This underlying phenomenon of rank-and-file resistance, present
throughout this period, added a vital dimension to the entire process of
bargaining and compromise between government and union leaders. In
the light of this opposition it becomes clear that the 300 or so union
leaders negotiating the future of the movement in Buenos Aires were by
no means free to do as they pleased. Given the groundswell of oppo
sition from their members they were always aware of the danger of
being outflanked if they gave away too much. Framini at the meeting on
26 October made it clear to the government that ‘the working masses
had been prepared to show their strength* but had for the moment
obeyed their leaders - the clear implication being that this obedience
was contingent on their leaders putting an end to attacks on the
unions.25
The Peronist union leaders were very aware of the threat to their
credibility this posed, and the danger of their being bypassed if they
could not gain concrete concessions from Cerrutti Costa sufficient to
convince Peronist workers that the libres, the anti-Peronists, would not
take over the unions. In the absence of such concessions they had to be
seen to be giving some lead, even if this were only rubber stamping
movements already initiated by the rank and file. The logical corollary
of this situation was that however much they might personally favour
compromise the union leaders patently could not in practice guarantee
any such thing. As both 17 October and 3 November made clear, there
were strict limits to their control of their members. This in turn
alarmed, and strengthened, the ultras in the armed forces and made it
even harder for Lonardi to give the sort of concessions that might have
reassured the rank and file.
The Peronist union leadership in this period was deeply confused;
The survival o f Peronism 53
with its confidence profoundly shaken, and far from overplaying its
hand in its dealings with the first post-Peron regime, it was in reality
reacting to a series of pressures it was powerless to control. The final
act, the general strike of 14 November, amply demonstrated this.
Although not officially due to start until the 14th many workers had
already struck on the 13th. There were already reports of clashes and
deaths in Rosario on this day.26 But while the strike call was used by
Peronist workers as a channel of expressing their discontent, there was
little concerted organisation from the national leadership and its calling
had the signs of a last act of desperation. Juan M. Vigo in his memoir of
this period described the situation in the following terms:
The order came down from Buenos Aires but nothing was done to ensure its
fulfillment. Bureaucrats without any real notion of the power of organisation,
accustomed to always having the support or neutrality of government, perhaps
they thought that things were going to happen as before.
The response to the strike call by the average Peronist worker was
considerable. O n 15 November the government officially admitted
absenteeism in Buenos Aires of 75% and 95% in the principal
industries.28 Lack of national leadership and the force of repression
doomed the strike, however. The new president, General Aramburu,
had threatened strikers with arrest. ‘Strike agitators* would face from
three months to three years in prison. The New York Times reported
the arrest of over a hundred delegates in Buenos Aires and the beating
up of many others as they stood outside the factory gates urging
workers to strike.29 By the end of the first day over a thousand strikers
had been arrested. O n the 16th the government intervened the CGT
and all its member unions, arresting many leaders. On the same day
,the strike was lifted, though many workers had already started to drift
back in view of the repression.
Thus the breakdown of the Lonardi interregnum left a Peronist
working class that was defeated, confused, but which had also shown
its disposition to spontaneously defend ‘something it instinctively felt it
was losing*.
For the union leaders the two months represented a watershed, the
passing of an era. From the beginning they had shown an inability to act
decisively, a form of paralysis of the will to do anything. Alberto Bel-
loni*s description of them, cited at the beginning of this chapter, cap
tures the rank-and-file activists* judgement of their leaders. Miguel
Gazzera*s condemnation is, perhaps, even more final, if only because
he was himself a union leader at this time: ‘We were satisfied with what
54 The Peronist Resistance 195 j- S
we had already lived through, and tasted and enjoyed. We were inexor
ably finished, totally exhausted.'30
Aramburu and the working class: first elements of a policy

There had, therefore, been, from the beginning of the military revolt
against Perön, a considerable degree of resistance of the Peronist rank
and file to the new authorities. This opposition had primarily focused
on the takeover of union locals by the libres, and the arrests that were
already occurring of both leaders and activists. It had chiefly reflected a
generalised sense of fear, uncertainty and confusion and had crystal
lised around issues such as the anti-Peronist offensive to wrest control
of the union structure. In general, in the brief period of Lonardi's
government this anti-Peronist offensive had not reached the shop floor.
This was to change immediately and drastically with the new pro
visional government of General Pedro Eugenio Aramburu and Admiral
Isaac Rojas. The new government's policy was based on the assump
tion that Peronism was an aberration that had to be erased from Argen
tine society; a bad dream that had to be exorcised from the minds of
those enthralled by it. Concretely the new government's policy toward
the working class and its institutions was threefold. First, there was an
attempt to legally proscribe a whole stratum of Peronist trade union of
ficials from further union activity. This was in line with the new
government’s intervention of the CGT and its member unions and
appointment of military overseers in them. This was to prepare the
ground for the creation of ‘democratic bases in the unions and the elec
tion of leaders with moral authority'.31 Second, there was a consistent
policy of repression and intimidation directed at grass-roots union or
ganisation and rank-and-file activists. Finally, there was a concerted
government and employer attack on the issue of productivity and
rationalisation which went hand in hand with an attempt to hold back
wages and restructure the functioning of the collective bargaining
system.
The first line of policy was the easiest to implement. Apart from the
hundreds of national union leaders arrested by Aramburu when he
declared the general strike of November illegal, there was also the fact
that many thousands of middle-rank officials dropped out of activity.
The prevailing mood of inertia and confusion described in the previous
chapter hardly stood them in good stead to cope with the rigors of the
period they were now entering. A special commission was set up by the
government to investigate the crimes and irregularities committed by
the Peronist union leaders. The new authorities also passed decree 7107
of April 1956 which excluded from union activity all those who had
held a leadership or representative position in the CGT or its unions be
tween February 1952 and September 1955. This ban was extended to
cover all those who had taken part in the CGT congress of 1949 which
had approved new statutes proclaiming the CGT the ‘faithful reposi-
tary of Peronist doctrine*. In addition, all those officials of the now il
legal Peronist party were also included in the prohibition, as were all
those being investigated by the special commission. This decree was
modified later in the year but a large number of former union officials
still remained proscribed.31
A far more crucial and complex problem concerned union organis
ation on the factory floor and its domination by the Peronists. Immedi
ately following the intervention of the CGT the Ministry of Labour had
declared all internal commissions dissolved and lacking in authority. In
many factories the delegates were being appointed by the Ministry of
Labour as early as mid November 195 5.33 The Junta Asesora Gremial,
set up to advise the CGT overseer, Captain Patron Laplacette, dis
cussed the problem in late December 1955. They generally agreed that
the Ministry’s solution of appointing the oldest, non-Peronist workers
as delegates was unsatisfactory because the oldest workers were usually
regarded as the least militant and were thus hot respected by those they
were supposed to represent.34 Patron Laplacette eventually decreed
that the overseers in each union should appoint the delegates. In prac
tice, however, employers simply took matters into their own hands in
many establishments. In La Bernalesa, for example, a major textile
plant in Greater Buenos Aires, all of the 120, mainly Peronist delegates were
fired.35 Even the union commission of the Socialist Party felt called
upon to send a note to Aramburu warning him of the dangers of such
actions and insisting that no worker should be fired without receiving a
hearing from the Emergency Arbitration Tribunal set up by the govern
ment.36
The impact of Peronism on the shop floor during the Perön era
This policy of controlling and weakening the internal commissions was
intimately linked to a major concern of the new government’s econ
omic policy - an increase in the productivity of Argentine industry.
This concern was not a new one for Argentine government and employ
ers. It had underlain much of the increasing tension between employers
and unions in the last years of Perön’s government. In order to under-
$6 The Peronist Resistance 19$j- 8
stand the importance of this issue in the emergence of working-class re
sistance to the post-195 5 status quo we must first examine attempts
made in the 1945-55 period to restructure the balance of power on the
shop floor and thus lay the basis for effective rationalisation. The
increased social weight achieved by the working class and its insti
tutions in the wider society during the Peronist regime was inevitably
reflected within the workplace. In general this meant a shift of power
within the workplace from management to labour. It was this shift
which provided the lens through which much of the rhetoric of Peron
ist ideology was filtered. Formal slogans concerning ‘the dignity of
labour*, ‘the humanisation of capital*, ‘the social responsibility of the
employer*, were interpreted concretely by the worker in terms of the
ability he had under Perön to control, to a greater or lesser degree, his
life on the shop floor, to at least limit the prerogatives of management in
this area. This whole area of shop-floor relations was to become the
focal point of management and state concern after the economic crisis
of 1951/2, as they linked the theme of Argentina’s further economic de
velopment with the issue of increased productivity.
In economic terms increased labour productivity was considered
vital in achieving the capital accumulation necessary if Argentina was to
move toward a new stage of economic growth based on the production
of heavy machinery and intermediate consumer durables envisaged in
the Second Five-Year Plan drawn up by the Peronist regime. Techni
cally, in the conditions of economic recession of the early 1950s such an
increase in productivity could not be generated principally by the intro
duction of new machinery. Instead it was assumed that in the short
term at least increased labour productivity would have to come from
increasing output per worker from existing machinery.37 However,
from the employer’s and state’s point of view, the problem was not pri
marily economic or technical but, rather, social in nature. It lay pre
cisely in the unsatisfactory balance of forces generated on the shop floor
by a self-confident working class and a strong, state-backed labour
movement.
Concretely, the employers developed a three-pronged strategy de
signed to counter the effects of the expanded working-class power
within the workplace. First, from the early 1950s employers increas
ingly tried to revise existing incentive schemes by resetting bonus rates
with the aid of work study, lowering fulfilment times - in a word a
speed up of production. Where such schemes did not already exist
employers increasingly attempted to introduce them in their factories.
Behind this concern to introduce incentive schemes to intensify pro-
duction lay a basic preoccupation among employers and the state about
‘anti-social* work habits. Given full employment, an expanding state-
backed union movement and a high level of self-confidence, workers
not unnaturally tended toward a more liberal definition of legitimate
work intensity than that which prevailed in the pre-Perön era. Rela
tively high basic wage rates together with the fringe benefits built into
the new contracts considerably reduced the traditional economic com
pulsion on workers to intensify work effort and follow ‘healthy* work
habits. While employers had acquiesced in this during the expanding
economy of the immediate post-war period, by the early 1950s they
were determined to tighten up on work habits and labour intensity.
The second area of employer concern was the existence in many of
the contracts signed in the 1946-8 period of clauses regulating work
conditions. These clauses, won by an insurgent labour movement in the
strike wave of those years, limited management’s rights concerning
labour mobility and job demarcation, and guaranteed social benefits
such as sick leave with pay. The symbol of the new balance of power on
the shop floor and a main target of the employers* complaints was the
internal commission of shop-floor delegates. The contracts signed in
the early years of Peron’s first government contained clauses guaran
teeing management recognition of the commissions and assuring dele
gates stability of employment both during and after their terms of
office. While their basic function was to oversee the implementation of
the contract provisions, by the early 1950s they had come to assume a
wider role of articulating working-class confidence and limiting man
agement prerogatives in the production sphere. They were perceived
by employers as a major obstacle to effective rationalisation and the im
position of labour discipline. José Gelbard, the employers* leader,
had, ’indeed, vigorously complained at the Congress of Productivity,
March 1955, about the position which the ‘internal commissions
assume in many factories where they alter the concept which holds that
the mission of the worker is to do a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay
. . . neither is it acceptable that for no motive the delegate blows the
whistle in a factory and paralyses it*.38
Argentine employers encountered considerable resistance to the im
plementation of this strategy. Indeed it was this resistance, which
rarely surfaces in official documents, which led the employers to enlist
both the state and the union hierarchy in an official productivity cam
paign launched in 1955. In this sense the Congress of Productivity,
which was the culmination of this campaign, was an attempt to imple
ment officially, with the aid of Peron’s personal prestige and the
5 8 The Peronist Resistance 19;
weight of the state and union apparatus, a policy which employers had
not been able to push through on an ad hoc basis on the shop floor in
the preceding years. Working-class resistance to this was focused on
two levels. One was as a response to the concrete effects of the employ
ers’ offensive - resisting increased work loads, the lowering of fulfil
ment times, speed up of the line or the defence of a victimised delegate.
Worker opposition generally took the form of a refusal to cooperate
rather than overt strike action.39
More fundamentally, though, the employers’ intentions regarding
productivity and rationalisation clashed with some crucial working-
class cultural and social assumptions which had emerged from their ex
perience of the Peronist regime. Thus, they questioned, in a most basic
sense, the legitimacy of many of the presuppositions of the employers*
policy. It is clear, for example, that large sectors of the working class
rejected the legitimacy of any form of payment-by-results incentive
schemes. The almost obsessive insistence of the employers at both the
Confindustria congress of 1953 anc^ Congress of Productivity on
the basic need to accept such schemes indicates their concern to assert,
over and above the validity of the specific mechanisms involved in
rationalisation, the legitimacy of the idea of incentive schemes as the
basis for establishing the relationship between pay and work. While it is
true that incentive schemes were increasingly attractive as a means of
gaining wage increases in a period of inflation and government-
controlled wages policy, the constant pleas of employers for the accept
ance of payment-by-result schemes indicate that they were still an
unacceptable device in the minds of many workers.
This generalised resistance to the notion of incentive schemes and
rationalisation plans was rooted in the development of a shop-floor cul
ture in the Peronist era which translated the new social and political
position of the working class within Argentine society into a series of
often informal assumptions and assertions concerning what employers
could and could not legitimately demand of their workers within the
production process. Within this context it is clear that Argentine
workers considered the legitimate way to increase living standards to be
the adequate updating of basic hourly rates contained in the contracts,
many of which had been frozen since 19 50.40 Time wages based on
good hourly rates, together with the fringe benefits such as increments
for experience, family allowances, etc., which had been introduced into
the contracts of the 1946—8 period, were considered a crucial gain by
the working class. They were a concrete expression of what justicia
social represented for workers; the ability to earn a good wage without
being subjected to inhuman pressures within the production process.
In a similar fashion, the clamour of the employers for the revision of
the clauses in the labour contracts which regulated work conditions
encountered a generalised opposition from workers. While for manage
ment these clauses represented a major obstacle to effective rationalis
ation, for workers the work practices and provisions enshrined in them
provided a vital safeguard in terms of the quality of life in the factories.
These clauses were symbolic of a crucial part of what the Peronist ex
perience meant for workers. They expressed, in a very concrete way,
the change in the socio-political position of workers in the broader
society as this transformation was experienced at a most basic level of
class relationship — the relationship between employer and worker
within the workplace. They were, so to speak, the small print of every
day reality which lay behind the vaguer abstractions of Peronist rhet
oric. They embodied what workers had come to regard as a rightful and
essential regulation on their part of the functioning of the labour pro
cess and as such there was a tendency to regard them as not open to
legitimate negotiation between management and unions.
This generalised ideological resistance of workers to the employers’
strategy was both of a limited and ambiguous nature. It never involved
a critique of the criteria underlying capitalist production relations. The
opposition to rationalisation was never extended to a general challenge
to ‘management’s right to manage its plants’*. There is little evidence,
for example, of any demand for workers’ control emerging out of the
battle against Taylorism. Evidently the general acceptance of the legit
imacy of capitalist production relations and the authority relations con
tained within them was itself a reflection of certain of the basic tenets of
Peronist ideology.
We must be careful, however, not to ascribe the limitations of the
working class’s challenge to capitalist authority solely to the weight of
the Peronist state’s ideological manipulation. If, as we have already
suggested in the preceding chapter, the desirability of general social
harmony preached by Perön spoke to an important perception within
the working class, then we may also suggest that a recognition of the
mutual interests of capital and labour to cooperate within the produc
tion process was also an intrinsic part of working-class culture at this
time. This implied that management’s right to exercise control and
authority was generally recognised, as was the existence of a generally
accepted ethical ideal that the relationship between employers and
workers should be consensual. This would seem to have been re
inforced by a genuine internalisation by workers of pride in Argentine
industrial performance which symbolised the regaining of national self
esteem under Perön.
6o The Peronist Resistance 19sS~8
What had made the issue so complex and fraught with problems for
both management and the Peronist state, however, was that while there
might be genuine abstract agreement on the ethical desirability of har
mony and consensus, the translating of such agreement into the con
crete reality of shop-floor relations involved competing versions of
what this ideal scenario should comprise. Certainly, from the working
class’s point of view, their notions of where the legitimate parameters
of managerial authority were to be drawn were deeply influenced by
the development of the shop-floor culture to which we have referred
and, more generally, by the changed status of workers within national
society. This meant that despite the general endorsement of employer
authority, in everyday practice within the factories worker resistance
on these issues did represent an implicit challenge to fundamental
aspects of capitalist organisation of production. Despite the lack of an
explicit challenge to managerial control, the concrete effect of workers’
insistence on their definition of what were acceptable effort and work
practices within the workplace was to challenge employers’ authority
within their factories.
By the end of the Peronist regime employers had gained few positive
results in terms of nationally enforceable agreements between them
selves and the unions on these issues. The union leadership, aware of
their members’ hostility, signed the National Agreement on Produc
tivity at the end of the Congress of Productivity but this was largely a
symbolic declaration of intent, the minimum they could do, given the
amount of personal political capital Peron had invested in the cam
paign. One of the reasons for this failure was simply the extent of shop-
floor resistance. Peron’s growing dependence on the working class and
the unions in the face of the disintegration of the original Peronist co
alition, meant that there was a limit as to how far the state could exert
pressure on behalf of the employers. This failure was to continue to
haunt Argentine employers. In April 1956 the Chamber of Metal
Working Industries echoed the same complaint that José Gelbard had
uttered to the Congress of Productivity a year earlier: ‘It is urgently
necessary to reestablish healthy discipline in the factories, which at the
moment are something like an army in which the troops give the
orders, not the generals.’41
Rationalisation and repression on the shop floor: the R evolution

Libertadora reaches the workplace
O nce the A ram buru government had dealt with the issues of the pow er
of the delegates it turned its attention to the problem of productivity.
Decree 2739, February 1956, which authorised an emergency wage
increase of 10% while longer-term agreements were being negotiated,
dealt with the issue. Article 8 authorised labour mobility within a fac
tory if this was considered necessary for greater productivity. Para
graph (d) of this article allowed employers to reach special
arrangements with their workers concerning new production systems,
over and above the conditions contained in the existing contracts.
Existing clauses relating to conditions and job classifications were to be
extended, ‘with the exception of those conditions, classifications and
clauses which, directly or indirectly, operate against the national
necessity of increasing productivity; all these clauses are to be con
sidered as abolished’.42 Thus, very clearly new agreements on wages
were to be tied to productivity issues. Patron Laplacette commented a
few days after the decree that ‘the government proposes to carry out in
practice the conclusions arrived at by the Congress of Productivity,
which Peron’s government limited itself to enunciating, without
taking any appropriate measures to ensure their realisation’.43
It was as a reaction to these policies and what they meant concretely
in terms of worsened working conditions and weakened union organis
ation at the factory and national level that major sectors of the working
class embarked on the long defensive struggle that became known in
Peronist working-class culture as ‘the Resistance’. Partly it was a de
fensive response to outright repression and harassment of shop-floor
workers. Almost any worker who could be considered a ‘trouble
maker’ was vulnerable and exposed to management caprice and victim
isation. The factory delegates were particularly vulnerable. Indeed the
situafion was so bad that the Socialist Party felt called upon to send
Aramburu a memorandum in June 1956 complaining of the govern
ment’s counter-productive policies. In its opinion, ‘the working class
considers that a process of revenge by the bosses is taking place, which
they see as being encouraged by the government’s policy which has not
been to fulfill its promises of guaranteeing stability, since in many
places there have been mass dismissals, particularly of factory dele
gates’.44
The police cooperated fully with the employers in this policy. A
pamphlet issued by rank-and-file metal workers spoke of one of the
commonest stratagems used by employers:
The employer who wishes to rid himself of any worker capable of demanding
his rights and the fulfillment of laws and guarantees calls in the police and they,
through the Section O rd en G rem ial of the Federal Police, construct a suitably
vague charge which attributes to the worker the intention of sabotaging pro
duction. Simultaneously they arrest him and keep him incommunicado, send
ing him to the section which corresponds to the place where he would have
committed the supposed crime ... it doesn't matter that the person charged
may be released immediately. The intimidatory action has fulfilled its purpose
and the boss has been able to fire him ‘with just legal cause'.45
Harassment within the unions was common, too. Local overseers

were often socialists, radicals or syndicalists active in the pre-1946 era
who now took advantage of the changed circumstances to settle old
scores. Within the factories, too, at the level of local supervisors there
was much scope for personally motivated retribution. In the ship-
repair yards of Rosario, for example, all chief engineers and heads of
workshops were replaced by the new government. The new head
engineer was in the words of an activist in the yards at this time, ‘a very
"gorilla” type of socialist who had been persecuted and hard hit by the
Peronists. He arrived in the yards with a very vengeful attitude and sur
rounded himself with supervisors who had the same attitudes.*46
This changed relationship of forces on the shop floor was a vital pre
condition for the implementation of the government’s productivity
policy. Decree 2739 became the employers* bible as they sought to
remove ‘hindrances to productivity* allowed for in Article 8. Taken in
dividually many of these ‘hindrances* were small issues, but cumu
latively they represented far more. They were a crucial touchstone in
workers* minds by which they could assess the changed circumstances
since the fall of Perön and by which they could gauge the concrete im
plications for their working lives of the change in political leadership of
the country. In this sense they were, perhaps, of greater importance in
confirming the Peronist loyalty of the majority of workers than the
straightforward issue of wages.
A typical example of such small, but symbolic, issues was the concili
ation procedure clause contained in most contracts of the Perön era.
The Chamber of Metal Working Industries in the memorandum
already referred to had complained: ‘To resolve any demand from a
worker both he and the internal commission, sometimes consisting of
as many as five people, are allowed to attend the meeting with manage
ment. And all of them have to be paid the wages they lose. The attend
ance of the claimant, together with one official should be sufficient.*47
With the weakened power of the internal commissions the employers*
wishes became common practice, thereby weakening an individual
workers* guarantee of a fair hearing in any dispute he might have with
management.
In a similar fashion the safeguards contained in contracts in terms of

job classifications and salaries were now attacked as an unproductive
restraint on labour mobility and the employers* right to place workers
where they wanted within their factories. In many cases Article 8 was
taken as specifically prohibiting such safeguards. Employers com
plained, too, of the rights workers enjoyed when taken ill at work; the
right to be sent home with pay, etc. This, too, was now limited.48 Even
smaller changes, though arguably of greater immediate significance for
workers, took place from workplace to workplace. In the Rosario
shipyard, for example, the free pint of milk given to workers engaged in
the unhealthy task of cleaning the engine rooms was withdrawn, as was
the provision by management of special clothing and protective
masks.49
Clearly, then, the radical shift in the balance of power at the national
political level could not help but be reflected within the factories. How
ever, once more the employers were to be disappointed in terms of
longer-term results. While there were extensive removals of many ‘hin
drances to productivity’ there was no all-embracing, across-the-board
implementation of rationalisation schemes, no extensive renewal of
contracts in an overall sense which would have legally enshrined new
arrangements at a national, industry-wide level. In part this was due to
government ambiguity when actually interpreting the law. The Arbi
tration Tribunal and Ministry officials were not uniformly favourable
to the employers in this respect and seem to have balked at the introduc
tion en masse of new clauses concerning productivity arrangements
into existing contracts. Underlying this ambiguity on the government’s
part, and indeed limiting the effectiveness of the productivity offensive,
was the wprking-class resistance it provoked. Whatever the limitations
on the overall introduction of new work schemes, the cumulative effect
of the removal of clauses governing conditions, and the attack on shop-
floor organisation, was such that workers clearly viewed the period as
one of unrestrained management abuse. As one union newspaper put it:
The employers thought that they could ignore the conquests of the workers
because of the military intervention of our union. In particular they attempted
to ignore and weaken the internal commissions ... all this inexorably suggests
to us that we are faced with an uncontrolled and unjustified revanchism o on the
part of the employers.50
The organisation of the Resistance in the factories

It was precisely to defend themselves against this government-backed
6 4 The Peronist Resistance 19; j- 8
revanchismo that workers began the process of reorganisation in the
factories aimed at maintaining the conquests obtained under Peron. It
was a fundamentally spontaneous and localised process. A rank-and-
file activist described the process in the following terms :
It was an embryonic and gradual process which arose from the very roots of the
labour movement and which was not dominated by the old bureaucrats but
neither did it install a fixed leadership either locally or nationally ... we were a
little like islands. I remember that in Rosario we in the Asociaciön de Trabaja-
dores del Estado, began to form a semi-clandestine grouping and most of us
were youngsters who had no active participation in the union before 1955 and
we had very little connection with other unions. I recall that apart from meet
ing in private houses the only communication we had with other union people
was with the tramdrivers, the ATE local of Puerto Borghi and the wood
workers.51
These semi-clandestine groupings, often meeting in private houses,

based their activity on very concrete issues. In the case of the group
mentioned above one of the first grievances they organised around was
the withdrawal of the six-hour workday for unhealthy work and the
provision of protective clothing. Even more common as a rallying point
and organisational focus was the defence of shop-floor delegates. In
CATITA, a large metal-working plant in Buenos Aires, there had been
a successful strike in December 1955 to defend delegates whom man
agement wished to dismiss.52 In the Lisandro de la Torre meatpacking
plant in the Federal Capital the first mobilisation and strike in April
1956 involved the arrest of three delegates by the military interventor.
An unofficial committee of rank-and-file union members led the strike
for six days and secured their release.53
N ot all struggles were as successful as these, but by May and June
1956 there was growing evidence of the increasing confidence and or
ganisation of semi-clandestine committees. In both the Swift meat
packing plant of Rosario and the Swift plant in Berisso unofficial
committees organised similarly successful strikes around the same
issue.54 The unofficial committee which had organised the Lisandro de
la Torre strike was by June officially recognised by the interventor as
the representative of the workers. O f course, this was by no means a
uniform process; much depended on the state of union organisation in a
factory before the September revolt. The meat workers had been one of
the best organised and most militant unions under Peron. They were
also in a crucial sector of the economy. Evidently workers in less im
portant sectors and with less of a tradition of militant organisation were
likely to find the task of largely clandestine reorganisation more diffi

cult. Even in the meatpacking plants the process of organisation of un
official committees was largely a plant-by-plant one. However, by mid
1956 this process was gathering momentum and similar committees
were being given de facto recognition by military authorities in other
unions.55
The recognition by the military authorities of these unofficial com
mittees reflected their growing acceptance of their failure, in the face of
this sort of response from the factory floor, to effectively eliminate the
internal commissions or eradicate Peronist influence from within them.
A similar lesson was driven home by the election for delegates to sit on
the wage-negotiating committees. These elections started in March
1956 and despite electoral manoeuvres by the interventors to try and
ensure an anti-Peronist majority on these committees, in most unions a
majority of Peronist delegates were elected. In Alpargatas, the biggest
textile plant in the country, over 12,000 workers voted for Peronist
candidates against 400 for the socialist list.56 Where the manoeuvres of
the interventors were such as to make free elections to the negotiating
committees impossible, the unofficial committees organised massive
abstentions and 'blank vote1campaigns.
The trend shown by the elections to the wage committees was con
firmed by the elections for the internal commissions called in August,
September and October. The very calling of such elections was itself an
admission by the authorities of their failure, in the light of the growing
number of unofficial committees, to impose military-appointed
workers* representatives. By October the Chamber of Shoemaking
Industries was complaining to the Minister of Labour that ‘in the ma
jority of factories all the representative posts are falling into the hands
of undoubted adherents of the deposed regime, whose attitudes hinder
the normal carrying out of tasks in the factories1.57
This confirmation of the Peronist domination of the working class at
the shop-floor level was rooted in the struggle to defend immediate
gains. In an important sense there had never been any question about
this, never any period of wavering when it had seemed possible that the
allegiance to Peronism might be effectively challenged and replaced. A
Peronist worker, quoted in the preceding chapter, had said that ‘we in
stinctively defended something we felt we were losing1when describing
the initial working-class response following the September coup. The
Aramburu-Rojas government immediately made that ‘something1con
crete. The attacks on the internal commissions, the general revan-
66 The Peronist Resistance i 9 f} - 8
chismo on the shop floor, the offensive against working conditions, all
spelt out very clearly and immediately what was being lost and the con
trast with the Perön era. The policy of the new government and the
employers directly reinforced the identification of Perön and Peron-
ism with these concrete, daily working-class experiences. This was
underlined, too, by the attitude of the other potential rivals for
working-class allegiance.
Socialists and communists in the Aramburu era

The socialists were in a particularly ambiguous position. They regarded
the Revolution Lihertadora as a revolution to restore democracy and
end Perön’s tyranny. As such it was not the revolution of any one class
but rather represented the united aspirations of all democratic forces.
The socialist press frequently reminded the employers and government
that the revolution was not intended to be anti-working class and that
attacks on wages and working conditions were a betrayal of its ideals.
Yet, they also realised that left to itself the working class would con
tinue in its majority to be loyal to Peronism. In the light of this they had
to recognise the need for limitations on Peronist activity, both politi
cally and in the unions. This led to an ambivalent attitude vis-à-vis the
government’s measures affecting the working class and the unions. O n
the one hand, they openly criticised the military for being a party to
employer attacks on basic conditions and rights. O n the other hand,
they also condemned the government when it recognised Peronist-
dominated rank-and-file committees dedicated to defending these
rights and conditions. Like many other professed democrats at this
time the socialists were caught in a vicious circle: in the absence of the
hoped-for realisation by the workers of their error in supporting
Perön, it became clear that the implementation of the democratic prin
ciples they espoused would confirm the loyalty of the working class to
Peronism - the very antithesis, in their eyes, of freedom and democ
racy.
More than this, the socialists and other non-Peronist militants were
unable to come to terms with the implications of the experience of ten
years of state-backed unionisation and improvements in wages and
conditions. For them all this had been a diversion from the healthy de
velopment of the labour movement; the result of workers with an insuf
ficient intellectual level being misled by a corrupt demagogue. The
gains achieved were, therefore, tainted in a moral sense by their associ-
ation with a paternalistic and undemocratic government. This led in

practice to the association of the socialists with the government and
employers* policy. This was clearly symbolised in the figures of promi
nent socialists at the head of intervened unions.58
Clearly, this was a particular problem with leaders from the pre-1946
era. However, even rank-and-file socialists were often at a loss to
identify themselves with the kind of elemental, largely spontaneous
working-class struggles that were taking place. They represented a dif
ferent tradition and notion of organised working-class activity. A
socialist militant complained, for example, about a wild-cat strike that
had broken out among bus drivers in Buenos Aires: ‘A union strike
must be carefully planned and decided on; generally speaking it should
be announced by public meetings and preliminary declarations which
should hope to achieve what is being demanded at the first go.*59
Imbued with this sort of attitude there was little common ground such
militants could find with Peronist workers in the unofficial com
mittees.
The Socialist Party maintained officially throughout this period an
attitude of moral superiority, complaining continuously and admon
ishing the working class for its failure to realise that its true interests lay
outside Peronism. Their policy oscillated between in practice endors
ing military government policies and proclaiming the need for the
moral regeneration and reeducation of Peronist workers. An editorial
in La Vanguardia lamented:
The authentic working class has not so far been able to be helped morally by
those who had the virtue to keep themselves above the demagogic contami
nation and low electoralism (of the Perön era). Although it is difficult to say
why, the labouring masses have not yet been able to be freed from such regress
ive and pernicious influence.60
While the communists shared many of the same basic attitudes

towards Peronism and its influence on workers they in general adopted
a more realistic approach. Although involved in some of the initial
attacks on Peronist unions in September they had soon adopted a line of
working with Peronist workers in the factories to defend conditions
and delegates. The problem this presented to the communists was that
since they were fighting alongside the Peronists on essentially the same
terrain they had little practically to distinguish themselves from the
Peronists or to offer Peronist workers by way of inducement to change
allegiance. Although they worked alongside Peronists in many unions
in this period and were accepted by rank-and-file Peronists as allies in a
68 The Peronist Resistance 19s}-8
way very few socialists were, they never posed a threat to Peronism s
hold on the majority of workers. Once the realm of immediate shop-
floor struggle was left behind, the Communist Party as such was
treated with considerable suspicion. This partly reflected memories of
the party's former anti-Peronism and partly suspicions of the party's
overall political strategy at this time which seemed designed to attain
acceptance of the party as an essential force in the ‘democratic' camp.
Many Peronist workers suspected that the hardline adopted by the
party in the union field was negotiable in return for an opening in the
political arena.61
By the end of 1956 the government had reluctantly come to accept
the impossibility of simply erasing Peronism from the unions by legal
decree or simple repression. It was also convinced of the lack of viabil
ity of alternative candidates for working-class leadership. The policy
which emerged from this realisation was in general the maintenance of a
continued hardline coupled with an attempt to minimise the complete
ness of continuing Peronist dominance in the unions. Measures were
taken to weaken any future union movement; minority representation
was guaranteed, more than one union was to be allowed to represent
workers in a single industry, local CGT bodies were to be autonomous
from the central confederation. Above all the Aramburu government
attempted to secure a significant, though minority, portion of the
union movement for anti-Peronists in the union elections held from
October 1956 on. With enough government intervention and manipu
lation by the military interventors in the election process the Peronist
advance might be held within acceptable limits. The policy was scarcely
successful. The results of the first elections held in October simply con
firmed the trend already shown in elections for the internal com
missions and wage committees.62
The wages struggle during the Aramburu government

The incomes policy of the Aramburu government was initially based on
the assumption that inflation arising from the devaluation of the peso
that was a major part of the new regime's strategy would be no more
than 10%. The wage award decreed in February was based on this as
sumption. However, devaluation combined with the relaxation of
government controls on prices pushed inflation well over this figure.
Employers used the new political circumstances to readjust profit mar
gins which they considered to have been held down by years of govern-
ment control by the Peronist regime. The wage committees which

began to meet in the winter of 1956 were, therefore, faced with almost
total intransigence on the part of the employers. Offers were generally
percentages on the basis of 1954 rates, and nearly always they were con
tingent on the prior acceptance of rationalisation clauses. Most workers
were already earning well above basic rates and so the increases offered
would have given them very little. The result was increasing conflict. In
the end most conflicts were resolved by the arbitration tribunal set up
by decree 2739.
The results were uneven for workers. Workers certainly gained little
in real terms; while real wages may have increased slightly in 1956 they
declined sharply in 1957 when inflation reached 25%.63 There was,
however, a clear redistribution of income in this period away from the
working class and since there was little evidence of increased domestic
investment €a strong presumption existed that the main result of income
distribution in this period was to reduce the share of wage earners in
favor of the more well to do*.64
Indeed, the significance of the wages issue under Aramburu lay
rather more in the area of perception than in the straightforward rise or
fall of real wages. Real wages had after all declined at times under
Perön, particularly in the early 1950s. What gave the issue an added
significance in this period was the degree of social antagonism and bit
terness involved. Concessions on wages were prised from a reluctant
management usually as a result of a bitter struggle. Where prolonged
strikes occurred they invariably involved the government since they
were declared illegal and the government took upon itself the task of
breaking them. The bitterness which resulted was all the greater since
the wages battle took place within a general context of steady, if
unspectacular, economic growth. This not only increased the percep
tion of the majority of workers of the injustice of the government’s
wages policy but also emphasised the direct role of the government in
holding down living standards. The decline in real wages and the redis
tribution of income was not the result of a general economic crisis and
increased unemployment. The strike statistics themselves bear witness
to the capacity in purely labour-market terms of the workers to defend
their wages. The decline in living standards was rather the result of a
political defeat, the overthrow of Perön, not an economic one. It was
the direct result of government attack on the unions and a government-
backed wage freeze. The government and employers imposed by legal
means and the power of the state what they could not impose through
the discipline of the labour market.
7° The Peronist Resistance 1955-8
The wage battles of late 1956 helped to consolidate the growing re
sistance movement. The most serious strike from the government’s
point of view, and in many ways a symbol of the bitterness of industrial
relations in this period, was the metal workers* strike of late 1956.
Sparked off initially by the employers* offer of only 20% increases on
top of 1954 basic rates, the strike lasted more than six weeks and
centred increasingly on the release of arrested workers and the
reinstatement of thousands who had been dismissed. During the strike
government planes and trucks distributed notices urging shop keepers
in the working-class suburbs such as Avellaneda and Lanus not to give
credit to strikers. Loudspeaker vans patrolled these neighbourhoods
naming strike leaders and urging strikers to return because other
workers were going back. Tanks and troops patrolled streets in these
suburbs; the police entered bars at random and ejected metal workers.65
Most of the metal-working plants were occupied by the army which
carried out ostentatious manoeuvres in the surrounding areas.
The strike was run by rank-and-file committees who established an
impressive organisational structure and ran the strike on the basis of
frequent delegate and mass meetings, and set up a number of com
mittees to mobilise community support. While the strike was lost in
terms of concrete wage demands it was not regarded as a demoralising
defeat in the personal reminiscences of workers, nor indeed in the rank-
and-file leaflets of the time. Rather, it came to symbolise class pride in
the ability to organise and confront employers and the state. This feel
ing of pride and communal solidarity was mixed with a deeply felt sense
of bitterness. The workers who ran the strike were hunted men who
lived on the run. Eventually the strikers were driven back to work with
an improved pay offer but without the release of those arrested or
guarantees of reinstatement. In fact, mass dismissals continued in the
metal-working industry as workers returned to work. In some plants
between 50% and 70% of workers were being fired. In CAMEA, one
of the largest companies in Buenos Aires, the employers demanded that
workers first sign a petition asking for reinstatement; when they
refused all 1300 were dismissed.66
This strike was the worst example in this period of government and
employer intransigence but it was not atypical. In the latter part of 1956
strikes in construction, shoemaking, printing, textiles, meatpacking
and shipbuilding were all declared illegal and the strikers subjected to
similar treatment. Anger at the ferocity of the repression and pride in
working-class resistance were to remain a crucial part of a militant cul
ture which emerged from the period. Raimundo Villaflor, a member of
the metal workers’ delegate committee in Avellaneda, described years

later how the twenty-nine members of that committee were eventually
tracked down by the police:
As the twenty-nine were taken out to be loaded into the police trucks bystan
ders began to protest and so the police told them that we were thieves. What a
joke. A band of twenty-nine thieves. So the delegates yelled back, ‘We are not
thieves, we are workers.* But they carted us off just the same.67
Workers had suffered inflation under Perön and hard times but they
had rarely been hunted down and treated like thieves.
3
Commandos and unions :

the emergence of the new Peronist
union leadership
We didn’t have arms, we couldn’t speak, nor vote, nor do anything.

Neither did we have any explosives; sabotage was the only way we had of
standing up to that lot who were screwing us. We didn’t have freedom of
press - nothing. All we had was Decree 4161 which said that even if we
mentioned Perön we could go to jail. We couldn’t even have a photo of
Perön in our homes. So we resorted to the canos.
Juan Carlos Brid
Old and new union leaders

Those who led the strikes of 1956, and who had been elected in the
unions where normalisation had been allowed, were largely new figures
thrown up in the course of the factory struggles since the fall of Perön.
In the vacuum created by Decree 7107 proscribing many former Peron
ist trade union officials, the activists who had distinguished themselves
in the daily actions on the shop floor naturally came to prominence.
Their attitude to the former union leaders is well demonstrated by
Sebastian Borro’s contemptuous dismissal of the older leaders in his
union, the meatpackers, who ‘shouted Viva Perön a lot but didn’t use
to do anything . .. they knew nothing about struggle from below.
When we began our struggle in the frigorifico we were nearly all new
people. There were perhaps two or three older leaders who hadn’t dis
appeared completely.*1
N ot all of the former leaders disappeared from the scene or suffered
the same degree of opprobium. Some had from the beginning adopted a
position of intransigence and maintained a standing amongst their rank
and file. Augusto Vandor of the metal workers, Miguel Gazzera of the
pasta makers and Amado Olmos of the hospital workers were examples
of younger leaders who had emerged as significant figures in their
unions in the latter stages of Peron’s regime and now from prison con
tinued to influence their unions. Where a former leader had maintained
his standing the new leaders elected in 1956 and 1957 often considered
72
Commandos and unions 7 3
themselves as temporary replacements until the former leaders could

occupy these positions themselves.
Those former leaders who wished to continue influencing the
unions, and the Peronist movement in general, began in the course of
1956 to organise themselves. By 1957 there were four main groupings:
the CG T Ünica e Intransigente, the Comando Sindical, the CGT
Negra, and a body simply known as the CGT. Most of these groups
had at best a very limited influence over the Peronist rank and file.
Their influence was somewhat increased when they united into the
CGT Auténtica in July 1957. The secretary general of this organisation
was Andrés Framini. Framini was in fact typical of the sort of residual
influence the CGT Auténtica exerted. A leader of the textile workers
since the early 1950s his intransigent position since November 1955,
and his imprisonment, had refurbished a somewhat tarnished repu
tation among Peronist workers.
There was friction between these groups and the newly emerging
leaders. This was partly a reflection of different temperaments, dif
ferent types of people and different union practices. The new leader
ships who had largely arisen from a spontaneous and de facto
democratic struggle on the shop floor tended to carry over the practices
derived from this experience into the newly normalised unions. Very
few of them had had much formal experierice in the Peronist union
hierarchy and they owed their leadership positions now overwhelm
ingly to activity in the daily resistance to management and government
policies. There was therefore a close identification between the rank
and file and these new leaders and this was reflected in an enhanced
degree of democratic union practice. Sebastian Borro, the leader of the
meatpackers in the Lisandro de la Torre plant, recalled:
We gave participation in the assemblies to everyone. A general once said to me,
‘You allow communists to speak in your meetings.* I replied, ‘In my union I
practice union democracy. All members have the same rights and obligations. I
as elected leader respect their rights and they must fulfill their obligations.*2
Alberto Belloni recalled, too, that his union in Rosario regularly held
meetings with more than 300 participants even before the union was
formally normalised.3 This increased participation in union affairs not
only reflected a different attitude on the part of the new leaders but also
a desire on the part of the workers themselves to take a more active role.
The very nature of the struggle at this time reinforced this. Faced with a
hostile state and with much of basic trade union activity condemned to
semi-legality, with very little formalised bureaucratic structure to util-
7 4 The Peronist Resistance 195 f- 8
ise, there was an inevitable increase in rank-and-file involvement. In
addition to feeling threatened by this new spirit, the former leaders re
sented having to stand on the sidelines and watch their unions move
increasingly beyond their grasp. This feeling increased as, throughout
1957, more formalised structures arose to give some shape to the largely
spontaneous upsurge of 1956.
The Intersindical and the 62 Organisations

In early 1957a Comisiôn Intersindical had been set up by some of the
normalised unions to agitate for the complete return of all unions
through free elections, the return of the CGT, the lifting of all legal
restraints on participation in union affairs and the release of all those
imprisoned for union activities. The initial driving force behind the
Intersindical had come from the communists but it was soon seized on
by others as a first legal structure around which to organise some form
of pressure on the government. By April 1957 it claimed the affiliation
of thirty-five unions and five federations and throughout the winter of
that year, as more of the big industrial unions like the textile workers,
metal workers and meat workers were won by the Peronists, its
influence increased.4 The original communist influence on the organis
ing committee diminished and by July it was dominated by the Peron
ists. On i May 1957 the Intersindical called a demonstration to
celebrate international workers* day; this was the first legal demon
stration by workers since November 1955. O n 12 July it organised a
general strike to demand the release of all union prisoners and the com
plete normalisation of the unions. Unofficial estimates calculated that
some two and a half million workers were affected.5
The growing influence of the Intersindical fuelled the latent antagon
ism between old and new Peronist union leaders. For the former union
leaders the power of the Intersindical represented a direct challenge to
their hopes of regaining their old positions since the very legality under
which it operated confirmed the legitimacy of the new leadership. In
the clandestine councils of the Peronist movement - in particular in
arguments presented to John William Cooke, Peron’s personal del
egate - they maintained that the Intersindical had to be fought since
many of the newly elected leaders emerging under its protection were
only ‘lukewarm* Peronists elected in fraudulent elections. Moreover,
they argued, the Intersindical would not alter the government’s deter
mination to do everything in its power to weaken Peronist influence in
the unions, only handing back the unions as and when it thought fit.
Commandos and unions 75
The new leaders, on the other hand, argued that it was essential to use
the Intersindical and the legality it enjoyed. With many unions still to
be won back from government and non-Peronist hands an organisation
of this type could help limit the effectiveness of government fraud and
manipulation. Moreover, to ignore it would would be to leave the way
open for its use by anti-Peronists.6
It was only with the emergence of the Intersindical that a certain
coherence began to be possible in the organisation of the Peronist forces
in the unions. The struggle in 1956 had been localised and atomised,
with activists in one union scarcely knowing what was taking place out
side their union, or often outside their workplace. The space conceded
by Aramburu as he tried to move from a policy of outright repression to
some more realistic solution to the ‘working-class problem* was seized
on and used by the new leaderships to consolidate and organise the pos
itions won in the course of 1956. This also gave the Peronist movement
in clandestinity a greater coherence since it provided it with an insti
tutional framework lacking since the proscription of the Partido Peron-
ista and the CGT in November 1955. It was, for example, only really
with the appearance of the Intersindical that orders from Perön began
to reach the union leadership, and through them the rank and file, in a
consistent way. It was, likewise, largely through the unions that the
Peronist campaign for a blank vote in the Constituent Assembly elec
tions of July 1957 was organised.
This organisational progress was confirmed and increased with the
setting up of the 62 Organisations. This organisation emerged out of
the congress called to normalise the CGT in September 1957. The mili
tary head of the CGT, Captain Patron Laplacette, had attempted
through the purging of voting lists in some unions where the anti-
Peronists had strength to ensure a considerable anti-Peronist presence
in the congress. By September socialists and other anti-Peronists were
in power in the shop worker, bank worker and civil servants* unions, in
addition to those unions won by these forces in the 1956 elections: prin
cipally the print workers, the municipal employees and garment
workers. In addition they controlled many sections of the Union Fer-
roviaria, the main rail union. By grossly inflating the membership
figures for these unions Patron Laplacette hoped to guarantee them a
majority of the delegates sent to the congress.7 When this was seen to
have failed and the anti-Peronists found themselves in a minority on the
commission reviewing delegate credentials they abandoned the
congress. Those unions who remained in the congress, chiefly Peronist
but with some communist-influenced unions too, numbered some
j6 The Peronist Resistance 19$5-8
sixty-two organisations and thus constituted themselves as a body with
that title. The communists soon left and formed a body of nineteen
unions which they controlled. The anti-Peronist unions which had left
the congress formed a grouping known as the 32 Democratic Organis
ations.
The emergence of the 62 Organisations was an important develop
ment since it not only confirmed the dominant position of the Peronists
in the unions but also provided them with a completely Peronist legal
organisation with which to operate and pressure the government in the
wider union and political field. It also confirmed what in practice two
years of struggle since the fall of Perön had shown: that the unions
were the chief organising force and institutional expression of Peronism
in the post-195 5 era. The 62 Organisations, reflecting the growing con
fidence of rank-and-file workers, adopted a very militant policy, or
ganising a general strike on 27 September, and another on 22 and 23
October, in protest at the government’s economic and union policy.
The government responded with a renewed wave of interventions and
arrests of union leaders. In December 1957 a public meeting called by
the 62 Organisations was broken up by the police, the speakers arrested
and their unions intervened once again. This affected key industrial
unions such as metal workers, textile workers and meat workers, but
the government was unable to break the power of the Peronist unions
to act as an organisational force for Peronism as a whole. This was to be
clearly demonstrated by the role played by the 62 Organisations in or
ganising the working-class vote for Arturo Frondizi in the presidential
elections of February 1958.
Sabotage and clandestine groups

The popular repudiation of the military government and its policies
utilised channels of expression which were outside the specifically
union sphere. The term ‘the Resistance’, which became a crucial refer
ence point in Peronist political culture, carried within it a wider mean
ing than that arising from the process of defending conditions and
organisation in the factories. In the folklore of the movement, which
was itself an integral part of the ideology of the working class in the
post-19 55 era, resistance in the factories was inextricably bound up
with resistance on other terrains. This involved a heterogeneous mix
ture of different types of activity; the Resistance included in popular
Peronist consciousness a diverse set of responses ranging from indi
vidual protest on a mundane level, through individual sabotage to clan-
destine activity and beyond to attempted military uprisings. All these
responses tended to be mixed in a very diffuse set of images which were
later to be encapsulated by a new generation of Peronists within such
phrases as ‘popular warfare’, ‘national popular resistance’ and which
carried with them a whole mythology of heroism, dedication, suffer
ing, shared comradeship and loyalty to an ideal which was to be a cru
cial element in the development of Peronism in the years to come.
The first and most immediate response to the new provisional
government took the form of what could be called a spontaneous ter
rorism. In the first half of 1956 a wave of attempted sabotage actions
took place. A typical newspaper report of such an action told of how a
group in Parana, in Entre Rios province, had been arrested for a series
of actions which included painting slogans, trying to set fire to a cereal
deposit of a large grain merchant, the burning of railroad wagons and
the attempted burning down of a Radical Party local. Those involved
were a truck driver, a railroad employee, and two others, all of ‘humble
origin’.8 Similar reports filled the press each day. A particularly vulner
able target was the rail system. In Tacuari, in Buenos Aires province,
in early February 1956 ‘of a convoy of 27 wagons the seven front ones
and the engine jumped the tracks*. Two rail employees were arrested.9
This was to be an almost daily occurrence together with attacks on
another favoured target, electricity power stations.
At the same time an increasing amount of sabotage inside the fac
tories was occurring. A typical complaint of employers was that of the
owner of a glass factory in Berazategui who complained of constant
damage to machinery and low production levels.10 In the month of
February the Frigorifico Wilson in Avellaneda suffered three incidents
of sabotage, one of which closed the plant for several days.11 The situ
ation was so bad that the Direcciön Nacional de Seguridad felt called
upon to warn the population that,
The law qualifies as sabotage and punishes with up to life imprisonment anyone
who destroys, disorganises or puts out of action in whole or in part documents,
objects, materials, installations, services or industries of whatever type ... and
warns the population that the police have been told to use their arms whenever
it is necessary to stop sabotage.12
The breadth of the warning was an indication of the range of actions

taking place. It is difficult to know precisely how structured these
actions were. It seems probable that the sabotage in the factories was
largely the spontaneous work of individual workers - the almost literal
throwing of a spanner in the works, the dropping of a lighted cigarette
7 8 The Peronist Resistance 19$5-8
in the paint shop. A typical court case at the time involved a textile
worker accused of destroying miles of cotton yarn and thus paralysing-
the night shift in his factory.13 In a similar case two metal workers were
accused of destroying machinery vital to the entire production process
in their factory.14 Perhaps even more commonly there were other forms
of indirect sabotage of production used by workers as a way of register
ing protest. The owner of a shoe factory in the Matanza suburb of
Buenos Aires complained to the police that the quality of his product
had declined dramatically.15 In the food-processing industry a
common device seems to have been to sabotage canned food by putting
ground glass in the tins; there were also numerous other reports of
adulterated food.
O n the other hand it is also clear that the germs of a very chaotic,
localised organisation were present from early 1956. In many areas
groups of workers, often from the same factory, did start to meet regu
larly and plan actions. This was particularly the case with railroads. In
March a group of ten rail workers were accused of having planned and
carried out a series of sabotage actions on the Belgrano railroad in
Greater Buenos Aires.16Juan Vigo, an important figure in the resistance
groups at this time, estimated that by April 1956 there were over two
hundred Commandos’ in Greater Buenos Aires, with perhaps some ten
thousand participants; though he added that Che control one had over
these ten thousand men was very relative*.17 Many of these ‘com
mandos’ were, at this stage, made up entirely of workers and were
based on a particular factory or group of factories. Vigo describes a
typical group of this type centred on the suburb of Ramos Mejia. Its
leader was a prominent leader of the leather workers’ union and their
strength lay in this union, the textile and the metal-working industries,
and the local electricity station.18
It is evident, however, that there were innumerable clandestine cells
which consisted primarily of friends who lived in the same barrio and
whose influence and actions were very much more circumscribed. Any
coordination with similar groups, even in the same neighbourhood,
would have been tenuous at best. These cells dedicated themselves
largely to the painting of slogans or the distributing of leaflets; since
this was illegal if it contained any mention of Peron’s name or Peronist
slogans it carried its own risks and was considered a legitimate form of
protest. It was also the case that many of the cells were not made up
specifically or even predominantly of union members. Many included a
cross section of social classes. A cell uncovered in Pergamino in the
province of Buenos Aires included a doctor, the sub-inspector of local
police, a building contractor and a former leader of the local CG T.19 In
Junin a cell was made up of the ex-mayor, a pilot and the foreman of
the local railroad workshop.20
There was also in 1956 an increasing use of bombs against both mili
tary targets and public buildings. This form of action required planning
in execution and a certain expertise in bomb making. Actions such as
the bombing of the Fâbrica Militär in Villa Martelli, or the attempt on
the weapons deposit of the Colegio Militär, had to be well planned and
required a minimum of back-up organisation.21 This was particularly
so because of the nature of the bomb-making process employed. In
these years very little dynamite was used since it was extremely rare in
Buenos Aires; most bombs were crude constructions made up of very
basic chemicals in improvised containers. They were known as canos
and were to become an integral part of the mythology of the Resistance.
Partly their place in this mythology was due to the process of produc
tion which was eminently amateur and social. There were very few
experts at hand with any knowledge of bomb making or weaponry in
general and the bombs made in 1956 were the result of trial and error
and based on very little actual expertise and made with considerable
risk to the participants. To acquire the materials needed a network of
people prepared to steal them, usually from pharmacies or factories. A
bomb-making operation needed at least six people to operate ef
ficiently. Thus the whole process came to be symbolic of the Resistance
in general; it summed up a series of virtues associated in Peronist folk
lore with the Resistance period - non-professionalism, self-sacrifice,
the active participation of ordinary people and the lack of an organis
ational, bureaucratic elite.
The general motivation behind these different forms of resistance to
the military regime could evidently be described as a rejection of the
new political regime and what it implied in social and political terms.
Behind actions such as bombing and sabotage, however, there also lay
an overwhelming sense of desperation. Sabotage, whether in a factory
or carried out against a public building, was almost literally the only
avenue open to most Peronists to express their rejection of the status
quo. Peronists who felt the need to fight back turned to some form of
sabotage as a means of expressing their anger and sense of loss, and of
asserting their ability to do something about this. Juan Carlos Brid, a
veteran of resistance ‘commandos* described this sense of frustration in
the comment cited at the beginning of this chapter.
The perspective that these actions were placed in was appropriately
cataclysmic. Militants expected the new regime to collapse from one
8o The Peronist Resistance 1955-8
week to the next. Rumours abounded of Perön’s imminent return; the
legend of the ‘avion negro’ in which Perön would return to lead his
people against the tyranny circulated widely. Innumerable fly-sheets
circulated giving advice concerning what to do to hasten the return of
Perön. One advised all Peronists to withdraw their money from the
banks, not to buy more consumer goods and to stockpile food. This
sacrifice would lead to the return of Perön.22 The leaflets always ended
with the assertion that ‘the hour is near*, ‘Perön will return’. A crucial
element in this perspective was the belief that large sectors of the armed
forces remained loyal to Perön and were awaiting the order to rebel.
This rebellion, it was assumed, would be coordinated with the general
strike and paralysis of the country.
While this outlook clearly corresponded to an emotional need, it had
two immediate effects on the resistance movement in the first half of
1956. First, it made worse an already chronic lack of security in most
groups. If the revolution was due next week there was hardly any need
felt for longer-term perspectives or security. Second, many resistance
groups focused their activity and aspirations on finding sympathetic
military figures. This again tended to obviate the need for longer-term
organisation. There was no shortage of sympathetic military figures;
Juan Vigo bemoaned the fact that there was always some ‘retired officer
willing to promise the revolution for next week or even for
tomorrow’.23 This all tended to wreak havoc on any attempted coordi
nation of the many disparate groups. A report in La Razôn in March
1956 described a not untypical case of a resistance group which had
been broken up in Cordoba, ‘all those arrested were workers who had
let themselves be convinced by rumours which said that Generals
Bengoa and Uranga had taken up rebellious attitudes’.24 It was only
with the defeat of the rising led by General Valle in June that the search
for military saviours abated somewhat and with it the cataclysmic per
spective.25 By mid 1956, too, a weeding-out process had taken place -
only the best-organised groups had survived and lessons of tactics and
security had been learned.
Divergence in the Resistance

From mid 1956 on most of the energies of working-class Peronist acti
vists went into the recuperation of the internal commissions and later
the unions. Inevitably the crucial area of the Peronist Resistance was
bound to be that which most directly affected the lives of working-class
Peronists. The other forms of activity centred around the commandos
did, however, continue and the line which separated them was often
difficult to draw. Indeed Perön himself had, from the beginning,
envisaged an overall strategy which did include the different levels of
activity and to which he gave the name civil resistance. His ideas about
this strategy were first laid out in the ‘General Instructions for Leaders’
which were drawn ùp in December 1955 hut which probably first
reached the eyes of resistance leaders in March or April of 1956. The
overall strategy the Peronist movement was to follow was, according to
Péron, a ‘war of guerrillas’ in which the civil resistance played an im
portant part. All attempts at confronting the military regime where it
was strongest, on the purely military level, were to be avoided. Far
more effective, said Perön, were the thousands of small actions which
would gradually wear down the military and undermine its will to con
tinue in power. In the social arena the resistance should keep the
workers in a constant state of upheaval with strikes, go slows, low pro
ductivity. O n a more individual level thousands of both passive and
active actions should be undertaken. Active resistance could include
sabotage; passive resistance included rumours, leafleting, painting slo
gans. All these myriad acts of resistance would eventually make the
country ungovernable and prepare the ground for the revolutionary
general strike which, Perön considered, would be the signal for the
national insurrection. Vital at this stage would be the commandos who,
together with loyal sectors of the armed forces, would be crucial in
guaranteeing the success of the insurrection. The commandos must
organise and train for this with actions such as attacks on military and
government installations.26
The strategy outlined in these general instructions was realistic if one
leaves aside the always problematic notion of the revolutionary general
strike and subsequent insurrection. The basic notion of the civil resist
ance did take into account the different levels of commitment and ac
tivity. Moreover, the instructions did have the salutary affect of placing
sabotage and clandestine actions within a less cataclysmic perspective,
to see them as parallel to forms of union activity and with a similar goal
- the desgaste (exhaustion) of the regime.
In practice, however, from the middle of 1956 there was a growing
differentiation between the commandos engaged in sabotage and other
clandestine activities and the resistance movement in the unions. This
was reflected in an underlying tension that grew up concerning the rela
tive functions of the newly regained unions. Initially, in the early part
of the year, people like Vigo had found it difficult to convince others of
the need to organise in the factories and the unions.27 This extreme atti-
tude did not persist but a difference in emphasis did remain. Thus in
August 1956 a semi-clandestine newspaper connected with activists
fighting in the unions found it necessary to discuss the relative merits of
terrorism and union work and to champion the latter: ‘There is no way
we can successfully confront this organised force of our enemies except
through the organisation of the workers themselves. To reorganise our
selves in the factories is therefore the fundamental task. O ur factory or
ganisation must be reconstituted.’28 In theory, of course, there was no
disagreement. Those involved predominantly in the commandos recog
nised the need to regain the unions. But this recognition was tinged
with a certain suspicion. Memories of the inertia of the union move
ment at the fall of Peron lingered. A participant of the time has
described the attitude which was shared by a not inconsiderable
number of militants at this time:
We all thought that the unions had to be regained to the extent that they could
serve the interests of the revolution. We thought that the unions had to give
their all for the revolutionary movement because if not they were not worth
worrying about ... to regain the unions was worth it to defend the rights of
the workers but fundamentally it was of value in so far as it helped the revol
ution. Because to have a union just for the sake of having it was pointless.29
Much of the tension was unspoken, particularly in 1956 when the

idea of integrating the unions into the governing system seemed absurd
in the face of consistent government attacks. It should be emphasised
that there was never at this time anything like an open split over this
issue. Indeed there was often a good deal of overlapping in personnel,
and in many cases material support for the commandos came from
union-based groups. Often a well-functioning union grouping could
provide forms of solidarity and support to clandestine groups. Sabo
tage was an integral part of workers’ struggles in these years. A particu
larly bitter union struggle was almost unimaginable without its
attendant bombings and arson.
In practice, however, those with the closest ties to the commandos
were the old union leaders rather than the new union groupings. Those
around the CGT Negra had been involved with Valle’s attempted
uprising and they were to call a general strike in December 1956 to co
incide with another promised rebellion. This was a disaster and led to
the arrest of many unionists connected with the enterprise. It was they,
too, who influenced those younger enthusiasts in the unions who did
join the commandos. Once again, however, the differences were
implied, unspoken and perhaps unnoticed for much of this period. The
men of the union-based resistance, in a general and ill-defined way, re
garded insurrection and the general strike to bring back Peron as the
ultimate goal of their activities in the unions. They had, for example,
rejected the original call of the communists in the Intersindical for a
general strike to demand the release of prisoners; a general strike was
only worthwhile, they had maintained, if it were demanding the return
of Peron. Indeed they regarded themselves as just as intransigent as
those of the armed resistance and combatted as fiercely as they the neo-
Peronist politicians who had emerged and who were trying to attract
workers into their ranks with less than the complete return of Peron.30
Ultimately, however, it remained true that the strategic prospects for
the two forms of resistance were distinct and of a fundamentally dif
ferent order. This was to become increasingly apparent throughout
1957 and although largely hidden for as long as the military regime
lasted, the implications were apparent for the perceptive to note. One
of these was John William Cooke who was by early 1957 in exile in
Montevideo acting as Perôn’s chief delegate and in constant contact
with him in Caracas. His letters to Peron throughout 1957 bear wit
ness to an, at times vaguely expressed, but ever present, unease about
the strategic future of the Peronist movement.
In particular, Cooke was preoccupied with what he saw as the dis-
juncture between what he considered to be Peronism’s crucial strategic
project - the insurrectional seizure of power to implement a social rev
olution - and what he recognised as the tactical adjustments forced on
the movement by the changes in the political conjuncture. This disjunc-
ture partially corresponded to the gap between subjective desire and re
ality. Cooke, and Peron himself, constantly affirmed that insurrection
was the only meaningful strategy for Peronism. This insurrection had
as its goal a social revolution: ‘We are not against this or that policy, we
are against a social system.*31 For this reason the movement had to
maintain its intransigence. In Cooke’s words, ‘a movement like Peron
ism nourishes itself on absolutes. It is the glory and the inconvenience
of national liberation movements. They must arrive uncorrupted, they
must be above politicking, at the margin of the common game played
by the political parties.*32 And yet the conditions appropriate for
launching this insurrection stubbornly failed to present themselves.
Time and again Cooke had to bemoan to Peron the fact that the basis
for launching the revolutionary general strike did not exist. In June
1957 we find him writing:
The general repulsion felt for the tyranny provokes protests, incites terrorism
8 4 The Peronist Resistance i955~%
and foments rebelliousness. This state of mind is not translated, however, into
a total civil resistance such as we desire. There are activist groups who place
bombs and carry out sabotage: this is creating a mentality for action and is
exciting many expectations. But as you pointed out people only very timidly
back these up with others ... this discontent against the government must be
channelled into insurrectional activity which will lead to a popular rising.33
Not only did the conditions for such a rising fail to materialise, the
likelihood that they would steadily receded throughout 1957. The very
success of the Resistance, especially in the unions, was changing the
context within which the movement had to operate. The government
was retreating and opening up possibilities of semi-legal, or indeed
fully legal, activity within the existing structures. Cooke recognised
that the movement could not ignore the new tactical possibilities
opened up for it and retreat into a revolutionary purism which would
only leave the field open for those wishing to divert it into the mire of
traditional politics. He wrote to Péron: ‘The present semi-legality,
with its slackening off of persecution, has made the soft stratum of
Peronism flourish/34 The problem was not, however, really one of
‘soft* elements taking over. Rather it was a problem of what social re
ality might impose on those elements who were intransigent. Con
cretely the problem was most clearly posed for the newly regained
Peronist unions. With their confidence increased by the wages battles
of late 1956, workers were seeking channels of expression outside the
purely defensive, union sphere. They saw such a channel in the Inter-
sindical. For Cooke the danger was that the Intersindical would come
to be seen as an end in itself and not a simple instrument of struggle. A
similar issue was at stake in the CGT congress of September 1957 and
indeed in the debate over whether government-sponsored union elec
tions should be contested at all.
The solution to the problem for the commandos was simple and
amounted to what Cooke had meant by a retreat into purism: the main
tenance, tout court, of an intransigent refusal to have anything to do
with the openings in the institutional system. The newspaper, Sobera-
nta, a mouthpiece for these groups, maintained that the problem of
how to deal with fraud in the CGT congress was irrelevant - Peronist
trade unionists should simply have nothing to do with any
government-inspired CGT congress.35 Two important figures in the
clandestine groupings, Lagomarsino and Marcos, sent Cooke a forty-
page document denouncing the takeover of the Intersindical by the
Peronists as a break with the intransigent position.36 This was a solution
Cooke rejected. In a long plan of action presented to Peron in August
1957 he argued that simple intransigence was no longer a feasible pos
ition. The great intransigent slogans of the Resistance had to be given a
‘tactical translation* and thus correspond to the Peronist masses* desire
to act concretely and positively. New semi-legal structures had to be
created for the movement. According to Cooke these new structures
would enable practical activity which would culminate, when the cir
cumstances were appropriate, in an insurrection.
While Cooke’s plan of action was theoretically plausible it was open
to objections. Specifically, it avoided the problem of the fundamentally
different nature of unions and commandos, and their consequent dif
ferent strategic possibilities.' The unions were fundamentally social
institutions rooted in the very existence of an industrial society and as
such they had an instrinsically functional role in that society. Their
existence as organs of working-class activity and organisation endowed
them with a certain degree of immunity to changes in the political situ
ation; a certain durability and resistance to political attack. The com
mandos, on the other hand, were eminently political organisations very
much dependent on a specific set of circumstances for their existence
and future perspectives. Unlike the unions they corresponded to no
intrinsic social or economic working-class need. In the absence of this
it was impossible for the clandestine groups to achieve a long-term
basis for survival in the one area where such a basis might have been
possible, in some sort of organic relationship with the unions. They
needed the possibility of concrete action and practical success. The fur
ther away such possibilities got the more likely it was that the semi
legal and legal structures, especially the unions, would be caught up in
their own dynamic and logic. There was a limit as to how long the clan
destine sectors could be kept in reserve before they ossified, starved of
any genuinely realisable perspective and, thus, inevitably subordinated
to the legal sectors of the movement.
This conflict remained for the most part latent in this period. Within
the context of a military government, which even as it granted a certain
legality to the unions still maintained a policy of repression and violent
anti-Peronism, the potential conflict between legal and clandestine sec
tors was barely noticeable. Yet the implicit tension was present. It was
especially present in the whole debate concerning the presidential elec
tions of February 1958. Should Peronists vote and if so should it be for
a candidate like Arturo Frondizi? While Cooke and Perön maintained a
rhetorical stance opposed to any participation in the elections, the
attractions of a positive vote were not lost on them. However, they
were concerned that the capa blanda of Peronism would be revitalised
86 The Peronist Resistance 1955~8
at the prospect of elections. This was, though, once again not the real
problem. The neo-Peronist politicians who would attempt to benefit
from an electoral opening had little real standing with the Peronist
working class and if Perön had ordered another ‘blank vote* it would
have been respected by the majority of working-class Peronists.
The problem was, rather, what credible alternatives could be offered
to voting for a non-Peronist candidate. Cooke seems to have vaguely
hoped that the dilemma would be resolved by an insurrection before
the February elections; he was particularly hopeful about capitalising
on the strikes led by the 62 Organisations in late 1957. Yet, he was
forced to recognise that insurrection remained only a very vague possi
bility in the minds of most Peronists. The strikes did little to convince
unionists of this viability. Indeed after the police raid on the 62 Organ
isations* rally in late December the main Peronist-led industrial unions
were intervened and the 62 Organisations were forced to deny any pol
itical content to their activities. The secret negotiations begun with
Frondizi*s representatives at this time were tacit recognition on Perön
and Cooke*s part of the failure of the insurrectionary option.37
The maintenance of intransigence, the need to cast the ‘blank vote* in
the upcoming elections, became the rallying cry of the commandos, the
clandestine groups. In the absence of any even medium-term prospect
of organising an armed rebellion this could be no more than a gesture of
faith, a reaffirmation of values and a rejection of the anti-Peronist status
quo. Objectively such a position had little to offer union militants. O n
the other hand, there were concrete advantages to be gained from
voting for Frondizi. A victory for the ‘non-continuist’ candidate would
help consolidate the positions prised from the military regime.38 The
interventions following the December rally had driven home the fragil
ity of their newly regained positions.
There was, moreover, the possibility of consolidating union power
still further with the reconstitution of the CGT. Frondizi was particu
larly insistent in his election propaganda on this theme. There was also
the issue of the legislation the military had introduced to weaken cen
tralised union organisation. Decree 9270, for example, had allowed
minority representation in union leaderships and the establishment of
several unions in one industry all with equal bargaining rights. All pol
itical activity by unions had also been prohibited by this decree. Much
of this legislation had in practice been very difficult to enforce but it
remained a reminder of the arbitrariness of the military regime and its
fundamental antipathy to the concept of a strong, centralised union
movement. Evidently a candidate such as Frondizi, who promised to
hold free elections in all unions where they had not yet been held, who
called for the return of the CGT and the reconstituting of a strong
collective-bargaining system akin to that which had existed under
Peron, held a strong attraction for the unions sector of Peronism.39
Many union militants could not, however, bring themselves to
accept the argument of voting for Frondizi, who had a long anti-
Peronist past prior to 1955. Sebastian Borro recalls how difficult it was
for the ordinary Peronist to conceive of Peron giving such an order and
the effort needed from the union leaders to convince the rank and file.
In Rosario the 62 Organisations needed ten sessions before they would
agree to back such an order.40 O n the whole the new Peronist leader
ship accepted, though, the logic of Peron’s order - the need to prevent
the consolidation of the most virulent anti-Peronism. Their leadership
and influence were crucial in gaining the mass of Peronist voters for
Frondizi. Nevertheless, over 800,000 Peronists disregarded the order
and reaffirmed their intransigence by abstaining or blank voting.
4
Ideology and consciousness

in the Peronist Resistance
For us the return of Perön meant so many things; the return of dignity
and decency for those who worked, getting the boss off our backs, the
return of happiness, the end of so much sadness and bitterness in the
hearts of ordinary men, and the end of persecution.
Anonymous worker
The period of the Aramburu government and the Peronist resistance to
this government was regarded throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s
by the Peronist left and others as a highpoint of militancy, an exem
plary period of working-class combativity. The very term ‘the Resist
ance* came to embody radicalism, to imply a left-wing movement, a
somewhat revolutionary notion. The basis for such an assessment has
been outlined in the prior chapters of this section. Purely in terms of
strike statistics the years 1956 and 1957 were unrivalled until then in
Argentine labour history. Over 5 million days were lost in the Federal
Capital alone in 1956 and over 3,300,000 in 1957.1 These strike figures
reflected not simply a battle on wages issues but were also symbolic of
daily struggles within the workplace to defend conditions and organis
ation won during the Perön era against a concerted state and employer
attack. The Peronist union movement had been revitalised in the course
of these struggles and was now largely led by a new generation of
leaders thrown up by the rank and file, a leadership which maintained a
greatly enhanced union democracy and participation. How can we
begin to characterise the ideology which emerged from this general
context among rank-and-file Peronist workers?
The reaffirmation of traditional tenets

Analysing the clandestine union newspapers, participant memoirs, and
pamphlets we can isolate a number of strands which represent the con
tinuing influence of traditional ideological tenets to be found in the
88
Ideology and consciousness in the Resistance 8 9
formal discourse of Peronism in power. First, there is a strongly voiced

economic nationalism, the defence of the national patrimony. One sees
this as a constantly reiterated theme from the very beginning of the
post-Perön period. One of the first mimeographed sheets which began
to circulate in the Rosario area, put out by workers in the Puerto Gen
eral San Martin, gave the warning that, ‘at present they want to drag us
back to a pastoral state, to a situation where the only wealth comes
from farming and cattle breeding’.2 One of the principal targets of this
economic nationalism was the economic policy of the military govern
ment. The agreement with the International Monetary Fund, the liqui
dation of state control of foreign trade, the decontrol of imports and the
relaxation of price controls, especially on agricultural goods, all con
firmed the image of a pro-imperialist regime bent on taking Argentina
back to the golden age of the cattle-exporting economy. The shift of re
sources to agriculture as a whole, achieved through the devaluation of
the peso, added to this.
Perön’s books and pamphlets took up the same theme with great
persistence, as did the organs of the Resistance. A clandestine news
paper from Rosario, El Cuarenta, gave as the reason for its title the fact
that, ‘We are anti-oligarch and anti-imperialist and for us 40 is the
number of the article of the 1949 constitution which guarantees the
right of our people to the natural riches of its subsoil, prohibiting their
handing over to imperialism.’3 José Rucci, at this time a delegate in the
metal workers* union, wrote an article in Palabra Argentina, in which
he voiced what seems to have been an overriding perception by
working-class Peronists of this issue:
Argentina seems not to know that we are living in a metal-working civilisation,
very far indeed from the pastoral and semi-colonial economy of our ancestors
and which a dozen or so oligarchic families are trying to reimpose on us; they
want to hold up the historical forces of the country, its technological develop
ment and the march of a nation towards an industrial civilisation.4
Working-class Peronists associated the pre-1955 era with a time of

national development which had gone hand in hand with a policy of
social justice. As such they saw the policy of the military government as
fundamentally anti-national, anti-industrial and anti-worker. They
saw an interconnection between these aspects. A statement issued by a
delegate conference during the metal workers’ strike of 1956 bears wit
ness to this:
What we are seeing is the creation of an anti-national and anti-worker front:
the representatives of the state and foreign capital united in a common design to
annihilate Argentine industry and crush the union organisation of the working
class ... in a semi-colony like Argentina the battle for economic liberation can
only be fought on the basis of a respected and organised working class which
will sustain the country in the face of the big international enterprises.3
The defence of economic gains made under Perön and of working-
class organisation, it hardly needs to be added, was another element
found in the ideology of the Resistance. This was conceived in terms of
the traditional Peronist notion of ‘social justice*, which together with
‘national sovereignty* were two cornerstones of state ideological rhet
oric under Perön. Economic nationalism and anti-imperialism had as a
corollary an affirmation of traditional concepts such as the common in
terest between employer and worker in the protection of national
industry. Similarly, ‘social justice* was accompanied by the concept of
humane, socially conscious capital and its speculative, exploitative op
posite. José Rucci, in the article referred to above, had warned
employers that ‘we know how to distinguish between national industry
and exploitative, speculative and oppressive capital*.6 A closely allied
notion was that of the fair profit that this humanised capital was entitled
to earn. Rucci*s main complaint about the employers in the metal
industry was, in fact, that their profits were excessive and therefore
exploitative.
In a similar vein a textile workers* leader, Juan Carlos Loholaberry,
voiced a common perception when asked his attitude to the socialist
concept of the abolition of classes. He replied that Peronists could not
be opposed to private enterprise but rather wanted to ensure that it con
tributed to the public good: ‘As for social classes, they conform to a
natural order of things which is impossible to change. Thus we do not
propose that they be abolished, but that they all aim for a single goal:
social welfare.*7 Part of this, too, was an implicit notion of a special role
for the state as the ultimate guarantor of the implementation of these
formal concepts: the ensurer of social harmony, the moderator of
excessive class interests, the protector of national sovereignty. There
was, also, often a strong paternalistic tone to this affirmation. At times
implicitly, though often explicitly, Perön was identified with the state.
‘La vuelta de Perön* became a guarantee that the state would remain
committed to playing its guiding role in society.
Elements of a counter-discourse
Yet if these traditional elements of formal Peronist rhetoric were a
powerful presence in working-class discourse, there were also other
elements present in this discourse, fragments of what one author has

described as ‘counter-discourse.*8 Many of these elements were sym
bolised in working-class struggle itself. The context of direct confron
tation with employers and with the forces of the state, and the intensity
of that confrontation generated and implied certain values and moral
choices which were drawn from, and themselves encapsulated the
meaning of concrete social experience. Strikes, as we have suggested,
represented more than the quantitative indices tell us. They also had
their peculiar tone and quality which imparted a particular character to
the consciousness of those workers who experienced them. A thorough
bitterness pervaded all aspects of class relations in this period and sur
faced particularly during major strikes. The metal workers* strike of
November/December 1956 was, as we have seen, a notable example of
this. The strike like many others in this period became symbolic of the
concrete solidarity and sense of unity workers felt. Far smaller-scale
daily conflicts - often over issues of shop-floor organisation, defence of
delegates, defence of traditional work norms - reaffirmed these values
of pride, solidarity and self-confidence. Sabotage activity was itself af
firmative of very concrete values. Though by no means a purely
working-class expression, this form of action had a clear influence on
working-class perceptions. Sabotage in the factories was not simply a
negative rejection of a particular employer. It also represented an affir
mation of a worker’s ability to confront, in at least a minimal way, a
social, economic and political situation he rejected. It affirmed his pres?
ence as a social actor.
This lived experience had, then, its own implicit meanings and
values, which we often find more explicitly articulated in the clan
destine newspapers, personal testimonies, barrio broadsheets of the
period which emerged from, and speak to, this realm of practical con
sciousness. One finds, for example, among these diverse rank-and-file
sources a widely expressed anti-politicism. As one participant in the
events of the period recalled: ‘During the Resistance we despised all
things political. For the Peronists political meant the same thing as elec
toral and to call someone a politician was regarded as a kind of insult.
Those of the Resistance thought that only gorilas were members of pol
itical parties.*9 This deeply imbued suspicion of the political system and
politicians was clearly closely related to the post-1955 political situ
ation in Argentina. The credibility and legitimacy of a political system
that used a rhetoric of democracy while outlawing the political ex
pression of the majority was evidently fragile. There was more to it
than this, however. Related to this was a clear scepticism concerning
^ 2 The Peronist Resistance 19j
the political slogans of official ideology. ‘Democracy*, justice,
‘liberty*, the ‘rule of law*, were frequently referred to contemptuously
- not in favour of authoritarian, anti-democratic notions, but rather in
relation to the hypocrisy of official political rhetoric. A mimeographed
newspaper put out by militants in the Puerto General San Martin, to
which we have already referred, voiced a typical perception in this
respect:
It is not necessary to be intelligent, it's enough to be a little sensitive to under
stand that this ‘Liberty* is too stained with blood of the people; it is a repudia
ted liberty which needs the force of fear, vigilance and death to sustain it ...
we are democrats but not of a democracy in which liberty, justice and law are
instruments which oppressors use to maintain their privileges. We recognise
that only one true and authentic democracy exists: social democracy.10
A corollary to this political scepticism was an affirmation and pride

in their existence as workers, which was not infrequently expressed in
terms of a concern for working-class self-reliance and autonomy. This
reflected a clear feeling of isolation and abandonment by other, pre
viously allied, social sectors: ‘Political leaders have defrauded us, poli
ticians have fooled us, intellectuals have forgotten us.*11 This lament
was directed as much against Peronist politicians as any others. Rarely,
however, is this left as a simple lament. At the very least a political or
moral lesson is usually attached to it: ‘Until when will we be the voting
fodder on whom the opportunists, the adventurers and the daring clam
ber their way to the top?*12 The implicit lesson drawn here was that the
fate the working class was suffering was due to its own failings, its lack
of autonomy, its permitting itself to be used. A union grouping of mili
tants who simply call themselves the Agrupamiento Sindical Argentino
issued a leaflet in May 1956 which circulated in the factories of Greater
Buenos Aires. One of its principal assertions was that: ‘The conquests
that we have achieved must be maintained and extended by the con
scious action of the workers, without official protectors who compete
to redeem what they suppose is our incapacity or our ignorance.
Nobody will do for us what we are incapable of doing for ourselves.’13
To remedy this situation the workers must convince themselves of their
worth, their presence as the fundamental class in society. The militants
who produced Crisol del Litoral, for example, frequently returned to
this, often in a tone which implored workers to listen: ‘The social dy
namic lies in us, in our breasts, in our muscles, in our hands.*14
An identical plea for recognition of their own worth and potential
control of society can be found, too, in many other rank-and-file ma-
tenais from this time. One from a group simply entitled Agrupaciön
Obrera in the suburb of Lomas de Zamora began by stating that:
The Revolution carried out by the oligarchy which always dominated our
society ... is underestimating the power and the value of the workers ... but
have they thought what their money is for? Money is only of use to buy goods
for use or consumption. Who makes with their energy all, absolutely all, the
goods? workers!!! Neither sailors, nor soldiers nor public employees nor
priests nor shopkeepers make goods ... they only consume ... while those
who produce, the workers, never earn enough to be able to enjoy the goods
they make ... Peron understood this undeniable truth ... he knew and
knows that you are the basis of everything: the houses, skyscrapers, machines,
roads, pons, boats, machines, everything, everything is made by you. Capital
is dead, it has no value without labour which transforms capital into a product.
What use is money in the banks if this is not used to create goods which rep
resent wealth? No use! What use is there in having millions in bills if there is no
food to buy? Capital without you is a corpse which is rotting.15
The leaflet went on to outline the strategy to be drawn from this - a
total general strike, a refusal of the workers to produce, consume or
distribute for five days. This would teach the oligarchy what they were
worth without the workers and increase the chances for Peron’s return.
This strange mixture of anarcho-syndicalism, Marxist economics
and personal devotion to Peron should not be passed over simply as a
confused, if colourful, anecdote. It is, I wo\ild suggest, a summation
and condensation of the experience of a significant sector of the work
ing class prior to 195 5, an affirmation of that experience and the draw
ing of lessons from that experience for the post-1955 situation.
Potentially, too, this was done in a way which challenged implicitly
many of the assumptions of formal Peronist ideology. This is not, it
must be emphasised, to deny the complexity and ambiguity of this pro
cess. Official Peronist discourse had itself adopted after its removal
from power a more radical posture and this certainly helped legitimate
rank-and-file notions concerning working-class autonomy. But clearly
there were also elements present which even a radicalised official
Peronism would find hard to absorb. Moreover, the organisational
forms this working-class self-esteem and autonomy might take were
often very concretely posed. An article written in El Cuarenta, for
example, made a detailed study of the issue of factory cells as a form of
ensuring working-class independence and organisational efficiency.16
Formal ideology and practical consciousness

The specific forms of subjectivity produced by the process we have
been outlining found partial expression in some of the notions and prin
ciples which, we have suggested, were present in working-class
discourse in the post-195 5 period. This rank-and-file culture, this
‘common sense* of working-class Peronists evidently implies an am
bivalent dimension in our understanding of the impact of formal Peron
ist ideology on workers in the period immediately following the fall of
Perön. We should be careful, however, not to rigidly oppose and
separate the two. We are dealing here with an ideological and historical
process. The more formal, traditionally validated tenets of Peronism
were clearly, as we have shown, an important presence in working-
class culture, powerfully shaping working-class perceptions. Rather
than a separation and rigid opposition we are dealing with a tension,
both explicit and implicit, between the two. This tension was itself re
lated to an ever-present tension between experienced reality, and the
'practical consciousness* that it generated, and the particular tenets of
formal ideology.
Raymond Williams, referring to this tension, has commented:
‘Where this tension can be made direct and explicit, or where some
alternative interpretation is available, we are still within a dimension of
relatively fixed forms. But the tension is as often an unease, a stress, a
latency: the moment of conscious comparison not yet come, often not
even coming.*17 The mechanisms involved in handling such stress are
various. Thus, for example, in the post-195 5 period one potential sol
ution adopted by working-class Peronists was to insist on a literal in
terpretation of traditional ideological tenets. This was partly a yearning
for a past where reality and formal ideological notions coincided.
Partly, it also involved an insistence on the legitimacy of concepts
which experience now challenged. One thinks here of notions such as
‘class harmony* and 'social justice* espoused by working-class Peron
ists not as a denial of reality but as a registering of a moral alternative, a
claim for a potentially superior society. Such literal insistence on the
value of traditional ideological maxims in radically altered social con
texts evidently had potentially disturbing consequences for the internal
coherence of formal Peronist discourse.
Another mechanism for resolving this discrepancy is the posing of
alternative, or even opposing, notions which correspond more ad
equately to working-class experience. Elements of such alternative in
terpretations were clearly present in the rank-and-file discourse we
have been examining, with its emphasis on working-class autonomy
and the unique role of workers in society. The most explicit expression
of these alternative interpretations within Peronism can be found in the

programme of the 62 Organisations adopted at La Falda in November
1957. This programme contained a demand for workers* control of
production and the destruction of the oligarchy.
We must stress again the ambiguity, contradiction and unevenness of
the process we have been describing. Traditional tenets were rarely
simply abandoned. Instead they remained, sometimes in modified
form, perhaps with altered implications and meanings, sometimes they
were overlain with new, alternative elements; or sometimes they persis
ted in unaltered contradiction with other elements of working-class
ideological discourse. Examples of the latter are numerous in the rank-
and-file materials of the Resistance period. We have already seen the
affirmation of working-class autonomy go hand in hand with the affir
mation of Peron’s mystique. The perception of a common interest be
tween workers and bosses in the protection of national industry
persisted even at times of heightened class conflict, as did the notion of
humanised capital. The identification of a class enemy was often simi
larly ambiguous, even for workers suffering from both the employers*
blacklist and state repression. At times the national bourgeoisie were
included among the enemies of the working class which stood virtually
alone in the social spectrum. A strong sense of corporate identity
of the working class in this case implied a strong identification
of a class enemy. At other times the national bourgeoisie were
regarded as simply incapable of realising their common interests with
workers.
Part of the reason for this ambiguity lay in the very nature of the gen
eral political context in which the working-class Peronist operated at
this time. The division of the nation into Peronist and anti-Peronist
implied that intense class conflict was absorbed into a political polaris
ation which was not, ultimately, class based. Peronist and anti-Peronist
were not necessarily synonymous with class positions. The very
thoroughness of the government’s anti-Peronism compounded this. A
decree such as 4161 issued in 1956, which forbade and punished with
imprisonment the possession of a photo of Perön in a private house,
the singing of a Peronist song, or the playing of a record, impressed the
political dichotomy of Argentine society onto the most mundane level
of daily existence. If a worker could-be arrested for going to work on a
bicycle with a picture of Evita stuck on it, then it was hardly surprising
that the figure of Perön and his return to power should serve as a focus
for his rebellion. A clear cutting across of class lines was implied. For all
the bitterness and isolation of the working class, there was a strong
strand of perception which considered the Resistance as a classless
struggle :
For the Peronism of the Resistance there was no doubt that the fundamental
enemy was anti-Peronism whatever its different guises; and conversely the fun
damental friend was another Peronist. Delegating in Perön the sum total of
what was good and just, the Resistance saw no need for any internal differentia
tion. In this way, the neo-Nazi could fight shoulder to shoulder with the
proto-communist.18
The fundamental enemy was the gorila and he could, theoretically, be
just as easily a fellow worker as an oligarch.
Moreover, it is apparent that certain of the values and assumptions
found in working-class culture at this time were more easily assimilated
and reflected within the formal tenets of Peronist ideology than others.
Assumptions concerning the full integration of Peronist workers as citi
zens into the wider polity, their political role within civil society, posed
few problems in terms of their articulation within official Peronist
ideology. These were elements Ernesto Laclau refers to as 'popular
democratic* elements within an ideological discourse and which refer to
a level of social and political antagonism which does not coincide with
economic class conflict but refers to what he calls the ‘people/power
bloc antagonism’.19 Notions which affirmed the role of the working
class in economic development and defence of the national popular
state also fall within this category.
On the other hand, assumptions and principles drawn from the ex
perience of class conflict were less easily expressed. This was particu
larly the case with conflicts emerging in the labour process. One of
Peronism’s most important legacies had been a shop-floor culture per
meated with notions concerning workers* rights within the labour pro
cess. These notions were rarely articulated explicitly in more concrete
ideological terms. To the extent that they were formally expressed and
justified it was in terms of traditional Peronist maxims of social justice
and social welfare. More often than not they remained implicit, present
in practical consciousness within the workplace, explicit in concrete
shop-floor struggles. Official Peronism had little to say about these
areas of working-class experience and the tension produced by this
void between formal Peronist concepts of social harmony, humanised,
non-exploitative capital and lived experience on the shop floor was
largely expressed as - to use Williams’s phrase again - ‘an unease, a
stress, a latency*. Yet the presence of these latent, half-submerged class
elements should not be ignored. They would represent a persistent
stumbling block that would confront both employers and the state in
Argentina in the course of the next decade.
Nostalgia and obrerismo in working-class consciousness

Raymond Williams has developed the concept of ‘structures of feeling*
to refer to these stresses and displacements which escape formal ideo
logical expression yet ‘define a particular quality of social experience
and relationship*. They are distinct from formal ideology and are ‘con
cerned with meanings and values as they are actively lived and felt*.20 In
the Peronist Resistance we encounter a period of working-class history
whose ‘structures of feeling* were profoundly penetrated by class res
onances, and whose characteristic elements helped set the tone of politi
cal and social relationships not only for the immediate post-195 5 period
but also for a whole generation of working-class Peronists.
One of the characteristic elements defining this ‘structure of feeling*
was undoubtedly a deeply ingrained obrerismo, an exaltation of what
one could call ‘workerist populism*. It is easily missed in formal analy
sis but its resonances can nevertheless be discerned. It can be seen in the
language used. Working-class Peronism exalted in its identification
with la chusmay las grasas, los descamisados, las cabecitas negras. Con
versely there was a bittemess and contempt for the non-worker. I think
that it is in terms of this particular resonance that we must consider the
many crude, single-page barrio broadsheets of the period. One which
circulated in Rosario in 1957 with the title Juancito contains a story
which might be relegated to the purely trivial if it did not speak pre
cisely to this issue of ‘values as they are actively lived and felt*. Entitled
‘Everyone should have one* it urges Peronists to choose their own
gorila:
Choose him in his club or wherever, look after him, but be a little perverse,
make his life amusing. Anything will do; break his windows, piss on his garden
path, send him anonymous notes, ring his bell at three in the morning. When
the time comes the bastard will know that he is a marked man.21
The tone of this and many other similar pieces in this type of press is
redolent with bitterness, frustration and a visceral contempt for the
social and political enemy.
At the same time this latent, implicit obrerismo included an affirma
tion of working-class existence. N ot always, however, in terms of a
politically articulate call for autonomous organisation, or a conceptual
isation of the function of the working class as producers of social
wealth. Instead we often find an affirmation of class feeling almost in
terms of sentimental folklore which celebrated the harshness and grief
of working-class life, together with the affective values associated with
home and family, barrio and workmates. We find, for example, in
another issue of Juancito a piece calling on mothers with sons in the
army to awaken them to their solidarity with their fellow workers:
Make him feel your love and miss his home; remind him of the bitter sweat of
his father and the tender tears of his mother, all the grief and the love of your
humble home. The feeling of his own room, the gang on the corner, the boys in
the workshop. Nothing more will be necessary. If you do this, your soldier
son will never fire on his own.22
Another, more problematic, element of this distinctive ‘structure of

feeling* characteristic of this period was nostalgia for the Peronist era.
Running through personal testimony and clandestine pamphlets was an
insistent contrast between the chaos and conflict of life under the mili
tary regime and the harmony and social unity of pre-i95j Argentina.
Clearly present in such nostalgia were elements of regressive fantasy for
‘the good old days* of a ‘golden era* - a plaintive reflection on a glori
fied, utopian past. But this was not all. If the vision of the Peronist past
was idealised, this was not simply a wishful construct arbitrarily
created. Elements of this recently passed ‘utopia* were appropriated
selectively from the past to meet present needs and to point the way for
future hopes. In particular, the past was appropriated not simply as a
longing for the recreation of a comfortable idyll of fat wallets and union
vacation resorts in Mar del Plata, but also as a basis for a claim for a
future society based on social justice and non-exploitation.
The ultimate basis for such hopes was a notion of the state - drawn
from the experience of the Peron era - as the engine of national devel
opment and, more crucially, the arena where the working class should
look for satisfaction of its desire for social justice. This did not imply
that workers were unaware of the partisan class nature of the existing
state. Rather, it represented a statement of what ought to be in the
future, based on a selective interpretation of what had been in the past.
The state as a sovereign public sphere ought to be the guarantor of
justice and it might again achieve this status if it could be protected from
the power of the rich, the oligarchy. It was this vision of an idealised
potential state which was to form the basis of working-class support for
Frondizi in 1958.
Similarly, the personal position of Peron in this nostalgia involved
more than a search for a comforting, paternalistic leader. Peron’s
figure and his attributes attained almost mythical proportions in the
Ï95 5-8 period, but once again we must insist that the elements of such a
myth were not arbitrarily imagined. Faced with a recognition of the
power of the oppressors and their ability to pervert the use of public
power from its ideal course, Perön himself became the ultimate
guarantor and precondition in the minds of many workers against such
a future recurrence. This involved, as with their vision of the Peronist
state, a certain selective amnesia in order to create a mythical Perön
who would serve their needs. Part of this was certainly conscious myth
making. Memories of Peron*s fallibilities - both personal and political
- were still present and discussed by militants in this era; jokes about
his personal life were also common. Yet, a recognition of the ‘reality*
behind the myth hardly diminished the symbolic importance of the
figure created by working-class Peronists. The ‘return of Perön* was
not evidence of a mindless political and emotional loyalty. Instead, as
the activist whose statement appears at the beginning of this chapter in
dicated, the return of Perön came to symbolise and synthesise a range
of aspirations which workers held concerning dignity, social justice and
an end to bitterness.
The picture which emerges from this analysis of ideology and con
sciousness in the 1955-8 period is, therefore, a complex, nuanced one.
Certainly, many of the traditional tenets of Peronist ideology con
tinued to maintain their hold. Traditional notions continued to have the
capacity to express certain needs and antagonisms emerging from
workers* everyday experience and activity. The intense class conflict of
the period was ultimately absorbed into an overriding political dicho
tomy which was not class based. Yet, it is also clear that there was no
simple conflation of the traditional maxims of Peronist ideology and
working-class perceptions and actions. In certain spheres, particularly
those relating to class-specific issues emerging from the production
process, there was an evident discord between lived reality and formal
philosophy. This discrepancy formed the basis for the potential emerg
ence of elements of a counter-discourse. There was a complex interrela
tionship between these two areas which, I have suggested, was
sometimes resolved explicitly in favour of new alternative interpret
ations, or, more often, resolved through the coexistence of contradic
tory elements.
Thus the sorrow, resentment and nostalgia felt at the passing of an
idealised, harmonious society and its appropriate discourse went hand
in hand with the unveiling of the coercive social and political relation
ships of the present. While this clearly led to radicalisation and
100 The Peronist Resistance 19s5-8
increased strains within Peronism and Peronist discourse this radicalis
ation took place within the context and terms provided by the existing
rhetoric of Peronism and there was to be an ambivalent balance be
tween formal Peronist ideology and elements of an emerging, though
often latent, counter-discourse. The ambiguity inherent in this situ
ation was to lie at the root of the social and political instability of the
following years. The notion of the recreation of a genuine, national
popular state where social justice could finally be located would clearly
underlie support for Frondizi and help lend legitimacy to the union
hierarchy’s political activity in the 1960s. However, the experience of
the Resistance and its specific structure of feeling, made up of pride,
bitterness and a sense of class solidarity and strength, would also form
the basis of a protracted working-class opposition to Frondizi and
union bureaucrats by providing social and moral criteria for public
policies which were directly at variance with the rationale of the devel-
opmentalist state.
PART THREE
Frondizi and integration:

temptation and disenchantment,
1958-62
5
Resistance and defeat:
the impact on leaders, activists
and rank and file
The union leadership don’t give way because they are traitors, nor
because they have sold out to Frigerio; they give way because they have
accepted in their minds the argument that the workers share re
sponsibility for the nation’s problems and because of the tremendous
pressure of government and employer propaganda with all its emphasis
on the ‘national popular’ alliance. All that is starting to carry far more
weight with them than the feelings of the workers in the factories, from
which the leaderships have become more and more alienated since Fron-
dizi’s victory.
A nonym ous delegate to 62 Organisations meeting, N ovem ber 1958
Desarrollismo: attraction and rejection in Frondizi's first

nine months
At the end of October 1958, five months after Arturo Frondizi had as
sumed the presidency, a strike broke out among workers in the Men
doza oil field. The strike was led by a coalition of communist and
radical militants and was in protest at the contracts signed by Frondizi
with the foreign oil companies. The union with jurisdiction over the
state-controlled oil fields was the Sindicato Unido de Petroleros del
Estado (SUPE). The Peronist grouping in the union, while claiming the
support of the majority of the workers, had not been able to effectively
demonstrate this because new elections, although scheduled, had not
yet taken place. The reaction of the Peronist union grouping, Junta de
Petroleros, 13 de diciembre, and indeed of the official movement as a
whole, was overtly hostile to the strike. When the issue of the new oil
contracts had first emerged in June and July the leadership of the 62 O r
ganisations had denounced the opposition of ‘certain elements using
supposedly nationalistic banners*.1 In language very similar to the
government’s official explanation of the contracts it had justified them
as necessary to ensure future energy self-sufficiency and thus break the
bond of colonial dependency. Recourse to foreign capital for this pur-
1 0 3
10 4 Frondizi and integration, 7 9 ; 8-62
pose was legitimate. The same line was adopted toward the strike in
October. The Junta de Petroleros called on Peronist workers to ignore
the strike call. The Consejo Coordinador y Supervisor del Peronismo,
the body newly created by Perön to oversee the movement inside
Argentina, followed this lead as did Linea Dura, the semi-official
organ of Peronism. In the sectors of SUPE controlled by the Peronists
such as Comodoro Rivadavia, Salta and the refineries at Ensenada the
strike did not spread. O n the 4 November Frondizi declared the strike
illegal.
The desire of the Peronist union leadership to avoid a direct conflict
with the government over the oil contracts was not unprecedented.
Indeed, on several occasions in the first months of Frondizi’s presi
dency they had backed out of conflict with the government.2 The
reason for the leeway given to Frondizi was, in part at least, pragmatic.
Initially, in the period between the elections and the inauguration in
May, nothing was done which might delay the transfer of power to
Frondizi. After he had entered the Casa Rosada they wished to give him
the chance to make good on his campaign promises to the working class
and the Peronist movement. In addition, the Peronist vote for Frondizi
in the elections had been won in return for explicit, if secret, commit
ments on his part. These commitments included: a revision of all
economic measures since 1955 harmful to the national sovereignty,
the annulment of all measures of political persecution, the lifting
of all union and political proscriptions, the return of the CGT
and the holding of union elections within 120 days and the legal
recognition of the Peronist Party. They did not wish to provoke an
institutional crisis which would prevent the fulfilment of these
compromises.
This position was to change drastically with the arrival in early
November of orders from Perön to denounce the contracts. O n 6
November the Consejo Coordinador changed course and counselled
Peronist unionists to adopt ‘a decided and energetic action of repudia
tion of the contracts*.3 O n 9 November, Frondizi, in a speech to the
nation, said that the strike formed part of an insurrectional movement
which had first been led by communists and then by ‘those who believe
in the restoration of the deposed dictatorship*. O n the following day a
state of siege was declared and troops moved into the oil fields; arrests
of communist and Peronist union leaders began. Rogelio Frigerio, con
sidered the chief architect of conciliation with the Peronist unions, re
signed from the government. At the same time at a stormy plenary
session of the 62 Organisations the delegates forced a reluctant coordi-
Resistance and defeat 1 0 5
nating committee to denounce the contracts and call a general strike for
20 and 21 November. The strength of rank-and-file feeling was evi
dent; forty-eight delegates voted for the 48-hour general strike and
seven for one of unlimited duration. The leadership of the 62 Organis
ations was strictly forbidden to initiate any negotiations towards a
compromise on its own initiative.4
Despite this vote, however, the leadership of the 62 Organisations
immediately began to seek avenues of compromise. In the days follow
ing the plenary session rumours circulated concerning the involvement
of the vice president, Alejandro Gomez, who was known to oppose the
•contracts, in plots with extreme anti-Peronist sections of the armed
forces. O n 14 November the 62 leadership had a long meeting with
Frondizi. Agreement was reached on most issues. The state of siege was
to be lifted, measures taken to control prices, the new Law of Pro
fessional Associations was to be implemented as soon as possible and
discussions begun on new collective contracts. Frondizi assured the
union leaders that the contracts would not damage YPF’s, the state oil
company’s, control of refining and marketing. On this basis the 48-
hour general strike was abandoned. Augusto Vandor, the leader of the
metal workers, was given the task of convincing Perön of the wisdom
of this turn-around by phone.5 The next day the strike in the oil fields
was called off.
In itself this episode was not of great importance. The definitive clash
between Peronist workers and the Frondizi government was postponed
some six weeks. Yet it was, nevertheless, a symptomatic event. Most of
the variables which would determine the relationship between the
Peronist unions and Frondizi were present: a recognition of the con
crete benefits from the union point of view of constitutional rule and an
unwillingness to push agitation to a point where it might have pro
voked a military move against Frondizi; an ideological sympathy with
some fundamental desarrollista tenets which helped prevent initial sup
port for the strike; the divergence between union leaders and rank-and-
file activists over the relationship with the state; finally the role of
Perön in determining the strategy of the movement and the potential
clash with the union leadership.
The attraction from the union leaderships’ point of view of not con
tributing to Frondizi’s ouster was evident. Already by November they
had achieved concrete gains from Frondizi. The most important of
these was the Law of Professional Associations, law 14,455. This was
modelled on the Peronist labour code and allowed for the recognition
of only one bargaining unit in any one industry. This effectively did
i o 6 Frondizi and integration, 7 9 / 8-62
away with attempts by the Aramburu regime to implement multi
union bargaining. The new law also abolished minority representation
in union leadership; the Peronist system of the winning list taking con
trol of the entire union was reestablished. New elections had already
been held in many unions in accordance with the new law and others
were scheduled in unions where Peronists were confident they could
win now that military interference had been eliminated. There were
also issues such as the reconstitution of union pension funds and social
services which were of immediate concern to the unions. The salvaging
of union finances depended crucially on the continued application of
the new Law of Professional Associations which authorised the reten
tion of union dues on behalf of the unions by employers. The law itself
was to be a constant theme of military discontent. In the longer term
Frondizi had also promised the return of the CGT once new elections
were completed; since the Peronists were confident that they would
win most of these elections they could look forward to a dominant role
in the new confederation.
All this was to give Frondizi a card of considerable power to play in
his dealings with the Peronist unions. In the first months of his govern
ment the clandestine sectors of the Peronist movement, and Perön
himself, considered this a bogus card. They either discounted the possi
bility of a coup, or considered that it would make little real difference to
the policies being implemented and the situation facing the movement.
The union leadership could not, however, afford to be so sanguine. The
declaration of the state of siege, the resignation of Frigerio and the
rumours of a military coup in the Gomez incident, were all forcible
reminders of the delicate nature of the institutional balance and of how
much they stood to lose in any shift of that balance. While they had
many specific areas of complaint against Frondizi, such as price rises
and the slowness in implementing the new labour law, the union leader
ship in general recognised him as their best option. Linea Dura in the
middle of the November crisis had recognised as much when it had
warned its readers that: Tf we let ourselves be pushed too far we will
inexorably serve the interests of reaction with all the consequences that
implies: a gorila government, anti-Peronist terrorism and the end to
any solution to our present problems.*6
The credit extended to Frondizi by the Peronist unions was not
simply the result of pragmatic considerations. As the November crisis
indicated there was also a fundamental ideological sympathy with cer
tain of the basic tenets of desarrollista policy. Since the declaration of
his presidential candidacy in November 1956 which had split the Rad-
ical Party and led to the formation of the Union Civica Radical Intran
sigente (UCRI), Frondizi had developed a coherent and distinct
economic and social programme which had become the focal point of
his election campaign.
Frondizi and the group of intellectuals which had gathered around
him - above all Rogelio Frigerio, the owner of the journal Qué - main
tained that Argentina must break out of its old economic model which
was dependent for growth on a declining capacity to import generated
by its traditional agricultural export sector. It had to produce for itself
the raw materials and finished goods it now imported from the devel
oped world. Only in this way could it overcome the externally imposed
international division of labour which condemned Argentina to a role
as supplier of certain raw materials to the developed world at increas
ingly unfavourable prices.7 While they recognised the rapid industrial
isation which had taken place since the 1930s they claimed that this had
been confined to light industry at the expense of raw materials, fuels,
machinery and industrial equipment, all of which still had to be
imported in large quantities. In the desarrollista schema development
was synonymous with industrialisation, and the creation of this
‘genuine* industrialisation was the cornerstone of Frondizi’s economic
strategy.
Within Frondizi’s industrialising developmentalist rhetoric certain
key areas were given preference. By the election campaign of late 1957
and early 1958 petroleum production occupied pride of place in his list
of priorities, followed by the development of heavy industry and the
development of high technology consumer goods in the petro-chemical
and electro-metallurgical field. Much stress was also layed on the cre
ation of an integrated road transport system which would form the
basis of a domestic automobile industry.
In general Frondizi and the desarrollistas framed their economic pro
gramme within a longstanding tradition of Argentine economic
nationalism. Certainly, for example, they had vigorously attacked
foreign capital and advocated the protection of national industry from
unfair competition and the development of a strong national market
based on the maintenance of high levels of internal consumption.
Agrarian reform likewise had a place in their programme. Frondizi had
himself been a leading critic of the contracts signed by Perön with Stan
dard Oil in 1955.8 Similarly the programme of the UCRI had adopted a
clear position of support for the nationalising of the oil industry and the
exclusive monopoly position of the state-owned oil company, YPF.
However, by 1958 Frondizi had come increasingly to accept the pos-
i o 8 Frondizi and integration, 19;8-62
ition which Frigerio had argued since 1956, that foreign investment
both public and private would be necessary for industrialisation on the
scale envisaged. By the elections of 1958 foreign capital was considered
to be not evil per se, but capable, under the proper control from the
state, of providing capital accumulation in vital areas of industrialis
ation.9
Developmentalism also involved certain fundamental social notions.
Once more working within a well-worn furrow of nationalist thought
they started from a conception of the nation as an overriding category
which subordinated and harmonised within it various social classes,
economic interests and political forces. The working class as a domi
nant part of the nation had to pursue its goals within the framework of
the common good. Class conflict was recognised but had to be resolved
within the context of the common national good. If the working class
attempted to prolong its sectional ideas beyond the limits imposed by
the national good it was condemning itself to a sterile confrontation
with other ‘factors of power’. This had been exactly what had hap
pened, they maintained, under Perön. The working class’s sectional
ism had ruptured the ‘national popular’ alliance with employers, the
military and the church, to the immediate detriment of the workers
who had had to endure the anti-worker and anti-national government
of Aramburu.
Desarrollistas paid great attention to the relationship between
employers and workers. While the historical antagonism between the
two classes was to be submerged within the overall national synthesis,
the role of a strong union organisation was to be assured: ‘So that
workers can participate with their own organisation and with an inde
pendent point of view in the course of national development it is necess
ary to strengthen and widen union action. This will ensure that
economic expansion does not exclusively benefit national or foreign
capital.’10 This attitude to the working class and its organisations was
part of a wider social rhetoric which drew together various economic
and social strands of developmentalist ideology and which was usually
referred to as ‘integrationism’. Summarising this philosophy Juan José
Real, a leading desarrollista propagandist, argued that: ‘The Argentine
employer has left behind the murky social horizon of Don Luis Col
ombo. The presence and representativity of the workers has already
been recognised and actively promoted . . . Machinery, raw materials
and energy, to which are added the appropriate technology and a new
employer-worker relationship, constitute the economic and social bases
of development.’11
Within this context it becomes possible to appreciate the nature and

depth of the attraction of desarrollismo for Peronist unionists. Clearly
this attraction went beyond the immediate benefits promised by Fron-
dizi. O n a most general level developmentalist theory, as it was articu
lated by Frondizi and Frigerio, drew on a deep-running ideological well
within Argentine nationalism and society which had its roots in the
1930s. This tradition, as we have seen, had been appropriated by
Peronism. Desarrollismo was, therefore, in a general sense, scarcely
innovative and this was one of its strengths. It drew on a strongly
imbedded ideological tradition. More specifically, Frondizi’s economic
nationalism had parallels in the pre-1955 Peronist experience. The
Peronist regime’s second five-year plan, launched in 1953, foresha
dowed very closely the economic programme advocated by Frondizi in
1957. Pride of place had gone to petroleum production, followed by
steel, chemicals and motor vehicles. Similarly, the role of foreign capi
tal in the industrialisation process had been first mooted by Perön. A
new, more liberal law of foreign investment had been passed in 1953,
and the targets for increased industrial and petroleum production con
tained in the second five-year plan were premised on large inputs of
foreign capital.12 Perön, himself, had continued to defend the Standard
contracts.13
In the social sphere, too, desarrollismo and Peronism had much in
common. The emphasis placed by Frigerio and his associates on the
need for the workers, through strong independent unions, to cooperate
with other ‘factors of power’ such as the church and employers corre
sponded with fundamental notions found in Peronist ideology and
practice. The assertion found in Peronist rhetoric that the classic con-
flictual relationship between capital and labour was outworn and
needed to be replaced by a recognition of the common contribution of
both to the production process was echoed in developmentalist
discourse. The language of the managerial revolution and modem
labour relations philosophy, which had increasingly dominated the
Peronist state’s efforts to increase productivity in its last years, was also
a commonplace of Frondizi’s rhetoric.
There was, therefore, an underlying affinity between key tenets of
desarrollismo and certain notions of formal Peronist ideology and the
attraction this implied for Peronist unionists was to provide a consist
ent underpinning of union activity under the Frondizi government and
its successors. The search for one version or another of this develop
mentalist strategy was to act as a consistent rationale behind the politi
cal and social activity of Peronist unions in the following decade. Yet,
no Frondizi and integration, 19$ 8-62
formal ideological affinities could not prevent a profound rupture be
tween Peronist unions and Frondizi. This rupture was centred on the
economic stabilisation plan Frondizi introduced in late December
ï 9S8.
In general terms Frondizi’s economic policy followed closely the
logic of the analysis propagated by developmentalist analysis in the pre
ceding years: the deepening of industrialisation and the rationalisation
of production. In practice, the most striking of his policies in the first
nine months involved the effort to increase industrial investment and in
particular foreign investment.14 These measures and those introduced
by the stabilisation plan of December were to have striking results. The
proportion of domestic capital goods production to total supply of
capital goods increased from 37% in 1950 to 63.7% in 1961. In the
economy as a whole total fixed investment rose from 17% of the GDP
in 1955 to 25% in 1961. Between i960 and 1962 the new machinery and
equipment purchased equalled in constant prices that of the entire
1953-8 period.15 By 1962 also, Argentina had the basis of a motor ve
hicle industry and was self-sufficient in oil production.
By late 1958, however, Frondizi was facing a chronic balance of pay
ments crisis. In return for an IMF standby loan he agreed to a crisis
stabilisation plan which was introduced at the end of December. The
plan included a drastic reduction in duties and surcharges on imported
capital goods, a devaluation of the peso, the lifting of most price con
trols and the lifting of quantitative trade restrictions. The government
also made clear its determination to operate what virtually amounted to
a wage freeze. The plan broke the fragile alliance between the unions
and Frondizi. The immediate impact of the plan on the working class
was evident. Between 1958 and 1959 real wages fell some 20% and
although there was some pick up in the following two years by 1961
they were still some 5% below 1958 levels. The plan also implied a
notable redistribution of income; the wage share of national income
declined from 48.7% in 1958 to 42.1% in 1961. It also affected employ
ment by provoking a brief, sharp recession in 1959 when prices reached
n 3% .16
The economic policy of Frondizi, together with the union and politi
cal repression which accompanied it, was regarded by the Peronist
union movement as a ‘betrayal*. They condemned, of course, the im
mediate impact of the economic stabilisation plan on employment and
wages. Most commonly their hostility to Frondizi’s economic policy
was framed in the language of economic nationalism and focused on his
concessions to foreign capital. More fundamentally though, the unions
condemned the betrayal of the notion that economic development

could be achieved on the basis of a class consensus, that industrial mod
ernisation could be achieved within a framework of a state-guided re
distribution policy. They condemned Frondizi for not applying the
social dimension of his pre-election ideology, with its insistence on a
strong union movement working hand in hand with employers and
government to ensure a ‘genuine* national development from which the
workers would equally benefit. This sense of betrayal was to remain
strong throughout the Frondizi era and was to be a continuing obstacle
to Frondizi’s attempts to rebuild the shattered alliance with the unions.
Yet opposition to Frondizi was not homogeneous. Indeed the very
notion of ‘betrayal* indicated certain limitations to this opposition. It
implied a continued belief in the efficacy of the ‘betrayed* ideas - the
burden was placed on the good or bad faith of the implementor rather
than the validity of the ‘betrayed* concepts themselves. Frondizi was to
spend much of the remaining years of his government trying to per
suade the Peronist union leaders of his good faith and continued com
mitment to the notions of ‘national popular* development. He argued
that the stabilisation plan had been an unfortunate, temporary necessity
and that concessions to foreign capital were necessary to break the
bonds of underdevelopment. As time went on, as we shall see, prag
matic considerations were to lead union leaders to increasingly extend
the benefit of the doubt to Frondizi on this issue.
There was, however, another type of opposition to Frondizi, an op
position which was rooted in the legacy of the Resistance period. This
working-class opposition drew its sustenance from the experience of
rank-and-file resistance to the post-1955 military regime and the
distinct set of values and ‘structure of feeing* which this struggle had
engendered. Whatever the weight of the identity between many of the
fundamental formal notions of Peronism and developmentalist ideol
ogy in attracting the Peronist working class to an alliance with Fron
dizi, the experience and culture of the Resistance were to weigh more
heavily for a sizeable militant minority throughout the Frondizi
government. The bitterness of the struggle begun against Frondizi in
1959 would further confirm this. This opposition had already mani
fested itself in the 800,000 who had ignored Peron*s order to vote for
Frondizi in February 1958, it would find expression again in the rank-
and-file demand for a strike on 17 October of that year, and again in the
sympathy of the rank-and-file delegates for the oil strike and the call of
these delegates for a general strike in sympathy with the oil field
workers.
1 1 2 Frondizi and integration, 7 9 / 5 - 6 2
This opposition to Frondizi would draw on the elements of a

counter-discourse which we have analysed in the previous chapter.
This evidently involved certain notions which challenged formal
Peronist ideology. More importantly though, the opposition to Fron
dizi and any compromise with him was based on a literal interpretation
of traditional elements of Peronist ideology - those same elements
which could also lead to alliance with the developmentalist state. A
literal insistence on such elements would now form the basis of oppo
sition to government policy. This implied a selective interpretation of
the Peronist experience. As they insisted on taking the rhetoric of econ
omic nationalism seriously, for example, they did not refer back to the
Perön of the Standard Oil contracts, of the Kaiser deal or the visit of
Milton Eisenhower but rather to the Perön of the nationalisation of the
railroads and denunciations of foreign capital. Also present would be an
implicit notion of the importance of Peron’s own presence. Perön
would be the guarantee that the power of the state would not be used to
the detriment of the workers or the nation.
This would mean, as we shall see, that this opposition to Frondizi
would not develop a fundamental formal critique of the basis of a devel
opmentalist strategy, but would rather persist as a moral rejection of its
impact, a deep suspicion of those who sought to implement it and an in
sistence on the relevance of social and moral criteria in carrying out
state policy. To Frondizi and, indeed, increasing sectors of Peronism,
this opposition seemed to acquire a self-destructive, almost luddite
quality. It condemned as betrayal what were in fact logical solutions to
capitalist development problems; problems and solutions which had
been recognised by both Peronist practice and theory prior to 1955.
Technically the desarrollista case seemed irrefutable, framed as it was in
an overwhelming technical rhetoric which took full advantage of the in
timidating power of what one author has called ‘the discourse of com
pétence* beloved of intellectual and technical elites. Within the
framework of a capitalist economic system - which most sectors of
Peronism remained formally committed to - there seemed few feasible
alternatives to this programme. Nevertheless, this opposition, centred
on a powerful militant minority within the working class, stubbornly
maintained its rejection of this logic and ignored the rationale of formal
ideological tenets, relying instead on notions of social justice, equity,
class solidarity and a literal economic nationalism drawn from their ex
perience of the Peronist era and the post-195 5 resistance.
Mobilisation and defeat: 1959-60

/ 959: the crucial year o f conflicts
At the beginning of January 1959 Frondizi faced a situation of uneasy
stalemate on the labour front. While outright confrontation with the
unions, particularly the Peronist unions, had been avoided, their
response to the announced stabilisation plan was clearly to be feared.
The Peronist rank and file had emerged from the period of the military
regime with a greatly enhanced self-confidence; a confidence based on
their proven ability to withstand military repression and to regain their
unions. This self-confidence had already manifested itself in the early
months of Frondizi’s government. The rank and file had been far less
reluctant than their leaders to show their disapproval of Frondizi’s
shortcomings. In the last two months of the year major confrontations
with the government had only been avoided by the leadership of the 62
Organisations specifically ignoring the militant lead given by rank-
and-file delegates to the plenary sessions. This feeling of confidence
and militancy was reflected in the strike figures for 1958; some
6,245,286 days were lost to strikes in the Federal Capital alone.17
Another important indicator of self-confidence was to be found in
the results of the union elections taking place in late 1958 to bring
unions into line with the new Law of Professional Associations. In
most cases new leaderships grouped in the 62 Organisations emerged
victorious.18 Both the confidence of the rank and file in the mainly new
Peronist leaderships and their enthusiasm for union activity can be seen
from the voting figures. In the textile union, for example, some 91% of
the union membership voted and the winning list headed by Andrés
Framini received some 60,000 votes. In Luz y Fuerza, the light and
power union, there was an 80% vote with the Peronist list winning by
some 8,000 votes. In the Frigorifico Nacional Sebastian Borro received
some 80% of the votes cast. In the meatpacking federation 70% of the
members voted and the two rival Peronist lists received 505 of the votes
cast.19
The mood of confidence reflected in these figures was to lead the
Argentine working class into a series of conflicts in 1959 of unpre
cedented scope and bitterness. In the course of 1959 10,078,138 days
were lost in strikes in the Federal Capital, with the involvement of more
than 1,400,000 workers - some six times the number involved the pre
vious year.20 The event which precipitated this upheaval and broke the
deceptive calm of 1958 was the occupation of the Frigorifico Nacional
Lisandro de la Torre by its workers and the subsequent general strike
1 1 4 Frondizi and integration, 1958-62
called in support of this action. The frigonfico was owned by the mu
nicipality of Buenos Aires, having been nationalised during Peron’s
first government. Its return to private enterprise had been first mooted
under the Aramburu government and had been talked about after Fron-
dizi’s inauguration. In December rumours abounded that the IMF
would regard the privatisation of the plant as a sign of Frondizi’s good
intentions. This was confirmed in early January when he presented a
project to congress concerning the meatpacking industry whose first
article called for the privatisation of the frigortfico.21 Immediately fol
lowing the passing of this law on 14 January an assembly of 9,000
workers decided to occupy the plant. The frigonfico was situated in the
barrio of Mataderos in the north west of the Federal Capital; it was a
barrio with a long working-class tradition of combativity centred
around the freezing plants. As news of the occupation spread through
out the zone, factories began to stop spontaneously in solidarity with
the packing workers. Shops in the zone and neighbouring areas like
Villa Luro, Villa Lugano and Liniers also started to close in sympathy.
O n Friday 16th, the 62 Organisations called for a 48-hour general soli
darity strike.22 In many areas of the country the working class had
already struck in a largely spontaneous fashion as nation-wide industry
was grinding to a halt.
When on the morning of Saturday 17th 1,500 armed police ac
companied by tanks burst into the plant the response throughout the
country was immediate. The growing strike wave escalated into a total
national stoppage. The non-Peronist groupings, the 32 Democratic
unions and the communists, were swept along by their rank and file and
gave their blessing to a solidarity strike. The coordinating committee of
the 62 Organisations was also taken by surprise by the speed of events.
In what was a dramatic improvisation they changed the planned 48-
hour strike into one of unlimited duration. It would seem to have been
an attempt on the part of the Peronist leadership to regain control of a
mobilisation which had clearly surprised and outpaced them. It cer
tainly bore all the hallmarks of a spur-of-the-moment decision since no
precautions were taken against the repression that was bound to follow.
Effectively within twelve hours the strike was leaderless at a national
level. Many union centrals were occupied by the police. Leaders like
Vandor of the metal workers, Mena and Aosta of textiles, Eleuterio
Cardoso of the meatpackers and Alonso of the garment workers had
been arrested. Others like Framini and Sebastian Borro were in hiding.
By Tuesday 20th, those members of the 62 Organisations who were
still at liberty decreed the lifting of the strike. The decision caused con-
siderable internal debate. Representatives of smaller unions - glass

workers, naval construction, rubber workers - called for the continu
ation of the strike.23 Those from the larger unions like textiles and metal
working, demoralised and disoriented by their leaders' imprisonment,
were in favour of lifting the strike. N o attempt was made by the 62
leadership to make the lifting of the strike conditional on the release of
union prisoners and a promise of no victimisation. Having spent the
previous nine months acting and being treated like ‘responsible' union
leaders they now seemed totally unprepared for the severity of the re
pression. Four days before they had visited the presidential residence in
Olivos to discuss the issue with Frondizi, now they were being hunted
and arrested.
In the rank and file of the unions the strike was not so easy to end.
The response of workers in working-class centres like Berisso, Ense
nada and Dock Sud, for example, was such that the military had to
occupy these areas.24 In the Federal Capital itself an enormous area of
the city lying between Avenidas Olivera and General Paz and taking in
the barrios of Mataderos, Villa Lugano, Bajo Flores, Villa Luro and
part of Floresta was occupied by the workers for five consecutive days.
One account of this occupation spoke of what took place in the zone:
The public lighting of the area was totally out, trees were cut down to block the
streets, and taking advantage of the cobblestones iii the streets barricades were
erected on all the access roads. In this way under cover of darkness combat
groups moved around relatively easily at night time and impeded the move
ment of the police and army in their attempts to enter the zone.25
In Avellaneda the strike was run by a committee of local unions;
preparations had been made here to counter the government's response
and act in clandestinity. Some public transport began to appear in Avel
laneda for the first time on Monday 19th, after the national transport
union had called for a return to work. The local strike committee or
dered the cessation of all such services. To enforce this, groups were
sent out armed with molotoffs and a number of trams were set on fire.
The strike lasted another two days in Avellaneda though in some fac
tories in the zone it lasted even longer.26 In Rosario, too, the strike
lasted a further three days after it had officially been lifted by the 62 O r
ganisations at the national level.27
The Lisandro de la Torre strike was to become a potent symbol for
the Peronist movement. While it was fundamentally a defensive action
and at no time presented a coherent political plan to overthrow Fron
dizi, it was nevertheless testimony to the extraordinary combativity of
the Peronist rank and file and the range of spontaneous initiatives of
1 1 6 Frondizi and integration, 195 8-62
which it was capable. It was also testimony to the depth of the impact of
the experience of the Resistance period and the relatively superficial
impact of Frondizi’s integrationist blandishments in the pre-1959
period. It was also a clear demonstration of the depth of the working
class’s nationalism and the way in which this fundamental underpin
ning of Peronist ideology could be appropriated by the working class,
not as the basis of class collaboration but rather as a rationale for class
conflict.
In the short term the severity of the government’s reaction to the
occupation and strike was a stark indication of how far it was prepared
to go to push through its economic programme. It marked the end of
any immediate possibility of implementing an integrationist develop
ment plan based on the idea that a ‘multi-class’ national alliance - with a
strong union organisation within it —could form the stable social and
political basis for developmentalist economic plans. The section of the
government most closely committed to these notions - principally
centred around Frigerio - was highly critical of the government’s hand
ling of the episode. In May Frigerio was forced to resign as personal
adviser to the president; in June the frigerista Minister of Labour,
David Blejer, also resigned. In June, too, Alvaro Alsogaray, one-time
Minister of Economic Affairs under Aramburu, was reappointed to the
post. In August General Toranzo Montero, a notorious anti-Peronist,
was named commander in chief of the army. These moves reflected a re
alisation by Frondizi of the hardline approach that he would have to
follow to implement his economic plans. They also reflected the grow
ing suspicion of the majority of the armed forces of Frondizi and his
desarrollista advisers. Alsogaray’s appointment had been preceded by a
direct military demand of Frondizi that he adopt such a policy. This
plantamiento had also led to the resignation of the subsecretary to the
Minister of War, Colonel Raimundez, known for his contacts with the
Peronist union leadership.
The working class was not, however, cowed by these developments.
In the course of 1959 there were three more conflicts of unprecedented
scope aimed at protecting living standards. From the end of April
through to the end of June there was a national strike of bank workers.
At the end of August the metal workers embarked on a national strike
for a new wage agreement. This lasted until mid October. O n 23 Sep
tember the textile workers* union declared a general strike of indefinite
duration over the same issue which lasted until 9 November. In ad
dition to these major conflicts there were numerous smaller-scale
strikes.
Within the 62 Organisations the militancy of the rank and fiie was
reflected in the make up of the new coordinating committee elected in
late January, immediately following the general strike. The committee
was made up largely of delegates from the interior and from smaller
unions who had opposed the lifting of the strike. The make up of the
committee was partly due to the fact that most of the larger unions had
been intervened during the strike. More importantly though it reflected
the resentment at their handling of the strike and the feeling that the old
committee had been too closely compromised with the Frondizi
government prior to January.28 This rank-and-file criticism continued
inside the unions. In early February a meeting of delegates from
twenty-four sections of the metal workers’ union, convened in Ros
ario, strongly criticised the national secretariat for its actions during the
strike.29 The Federation of Health Service workers, whose leader
Amado Olmos had been a member of the previous coordinating com
mittee, withdrew from the 62 Organisations temporarily because of the
severity of the criticisms thrown at the leadership during an assembly
called to discuss the strike. The rank and file at the meeting accused
their leaders of tacitly accepting the stabilisation plan.30 Even the new
leadership of the 62 was not immune from rank-and-file attack. At a
meeting of the 62 called in early March the coordinating committee was
‘bombarded from the floor with shouts of “traitor” , “sell outs” ’.31
The militancy and sense of confrontation present in a year which saw
four national conflicts of such scope, and three general solidarity
strikes, culminated at the plenary meeting of the 62 Organisations held
in Rosario in December 1959. The policy document presented by the
coordinating committee emphatically rejected Frondizi’s economic
policy:
With our industry unprotected we are once more going to be turned into
exporters of raw materials and importers of manufactured gopds ... we re
solve to energetically oppose this economic policy which represents a retreat in
our nation’s advance ... they are trying to take us back to a nation exporting
raw materials and importing manufactures which until 1944 placed us in the
position of a colony. We reject the economic system supported by the IMF ...
since it signifies quite plainly the exploitation of man by man.32
The document, which was unanimously and enthusiastically acclaimed
by the meeting, clearly reflected the feelings of the majority of Peronist
union militants and a good part of the rank and file. It spoke to a con
tinuing nationalist, anti-imperialist strain within Peronist ideology.
More importantly it also expressed an explicit assumption that any de
velopment not based on class consensus and a non-exploitative,
1 1 8 Frondizi and integration, 19$ 8-62
humanised capital implied a regression, an attempt to return to the pre-
1944 domination of the landed interests. This notion of the inextricable
connection between social justice and economic development was, as
we have argued, crucial to Peronist discourse in the 1940s and con
tinued to shape the working class’s vision of Frondizi’s ‘betrayal* and
their belief in the possibility of a ‘genuine’ national development. The
document spoke of how ‘the government vilely swindled the people in
the application of the promised national, popular programme’.33
While the developmentalist propagandists argued that it was absurd
to speak of a return to the pre-1943 economic and social regime and that
such talk showed a misunderstanding of the economic changes taking
place under Frondizi, the Peronist militants and rank and file were
marching to a different, less abstract, logic. The deliberations at the
Rosario meeting were imbued with a sense of bitterness and betrayal
which was deeply and genuinely felt, as the resolutions adopted at the
end of the meeting indicated. The final two called for a union-organised
campaign to blank vote in all future elections in order to reject a fraudu
lent and illegitimate government. The working class was declared to be
in a ‘state of civil resistance confronting the powers of the state
wherever its jurisdiction might be’.
The conflicts of 1959 were, in many ways, the culmination of the
militancy and self-reliance the Peronist rank and file had acquired in the
years of the Resistance. The Rosario meeting marked an important step
in confirming the maturity of the union movement, and its domination
within Peronism as the organiser of opposition to Frondizi. Yet for all
the militant bravado of that meeting 1959 also came to symbolise a
series of crucial defeats for the working class. In March when the Lis-
andro de la Torre plant reopened only some 4,500 out of a total work
force of 9,000 were taken back. The plant remained in private hands.34
The bank workers after seventy days of demoralising strike were finally
driven back to work under similar conditions. Both metal workers and
textile workers also lost their battle for a comprehensive revision of
their contracts. The failure of the two strongest unions to effectively
win new contracts inevitably tended to dissuade other, weaker sections
from trying. The majority of the contracts signed were inadequate
emergency increases rather than genuine renegotiations.
The unions, both Peronist and non-Peronist, found themselves in a
highly disadvantageous position when faced with a government backed
by the armed forces which was prepared to use the power of the state to
hold to its economic policy. In the course of 1959 many of the key
unions were intervened by the government. Moreover, with the sharp
recession provoked by the stabilisation plan their bargaining position

was greatly weakened. The unions were quite clear as to the desperate
nature of their plight and had few illusions about a victorious outcome.
The official organ of the textile workers* union argued in the middle of
the textile strike that: ‘We are not simply struggling for an increase in
salaries . . . we are struggling for the very survival of the textile union,
because this time the intransigence of the boss does not simply boil
down to a refusal to recognise our just demands but is now an attack on
the whole existence of the union.*35
Management intransigence was backed up by the government itself.
The desarrollista press criticised the government’s refusal to force man
agement to make serious efforts to settle in these disputes. The labour
correspondent of Mayoria complained of the treatment of the union
side in the textile and metal workers* conflict:
Before the unions, back against the wall, declare the strike the employers refuse
even to talk about possible counter offers, sticking instead to their first offers
which were unacceptable. And when the strike starts they then say ‘we will not
negotiate while the union takes measures of force*. Can this be a serious way of
conducting labour relations? ... To add to this the strikes usually have begun
after several months of useless effort in which the unions have been sent from
one office to another in various ministries achieving nothing.36
This is not to deny the enthusiasm with which the working class partici
pated in these conflicts; the textile strike was launched by a meeting of
over 20,000 workers unanimously demanding the huelga indefinida.
Yet, the result of this massive mobilisation was to mark a crucial turn
ing of the tide as far as working-class mobilisation and confidence were
concerned.
The impact of defeat: demoralisation and isolation

The impact of defeat can be measured in part in the strike statistics for
the following years. From the peak of over ten million days lost in 1959
the figures declined to just over one and a half million in i960 and 1961,
finally plummeting to 268,000 days lost in 1962.37 In less easily quanti
fiable terms these figures reflect a process of defeat and demoralisation
- the abandonment of active militancy and participation by thousands
of lower- and middle-ranking activists who had been the core of the
post-1955 resistance and renaissance of Peronist unionism.
In part this was the result of state and managerial repression. Thou
sands of Peronist militants were arrested by the state security pro-
visions brought in by the Frondizi government. The Plan Conintes
(Conmociôn Interna del Estado) was implemented in March i960,
giving the army full jurisdiction in the battle against all forces creating
‘internal disturbances*. The blacklist was rampant in industry.
Sebastian Borro was never again to work in the meatpacking industry;
his case was symbolic of many thousands of other militants. In an
extraordinary speech made by the subsecretary for labour and social
security, Dr Galileo Puente, in May i960, we can gain some idea of the
extent of this purging of activists. He boasted of how ‘we have elimin
ated the troublemakers from the unions*. The doctor described how
this was done in the case of an important textile company, Piccardo:
The personnel manager came to see me complaining of the thousands of prob
lems caused by the internal commission ... According to my instructions the
delegates were thrown out of the plant. They came to the Ministry and I threw
them out of there too. Because we are not here to protect idlers like them. Very
soon the good workers were banging at the factory gates. The management
then began to select, ‘this one can start, this one can’t*; and so of 800 workers
500 were taken back and three hundred troublemakers were left outside.38
Puente went on to boast of how ‘in Ducilo, Alpargatas and Good Year
the personnel have been purified of the troublemakers and everyone
lives happily*. If this was the concrete result of defeat in the textile
strike, an identical process can be seen in metal working. Raimundo
Villaflor, who had been a member of the delegate committee which had
run the metal workers* strike in Avellaneda in 1956, has described the
situation that he and many other militants found themselves in: T spent
year after year moving about from one job to another. It was a never
ending series of moves for many of us. They wouldn’t give us work,
they persecuted us.*39
The blacklist was, however, only part of the story. The dropping out
from active militancy also reflected a gradual, if reluctant, acceptance
by many of the middle-ranking activists of the fruitlessness of con
tinued intransigent opposition to both government and employer.
After the prolonged militancy of the 1956-9 period the defeats of 1959,
coupled with the repression and economic crisis of the following years,
did much to undermine the confidence and morale of a crucial stratum
of activists. The tiredness and demoralisation of these activists was
clearly seen at the plenary meeting of the 62 Organisations held in the
Federal Capital in May i960. In a speech given on behalf of the 62
leadership Eleuterio Cardoso, the leader of the meat workers* national
federation, outlined the situation facing the Peronist unions. He em
phasised that there were only two courses open to the working class,
Resistance and defeat 1 21
one revolutionary and the other evolutionary. Faced with this choice
the working class had to opt for the only feasible strategy - the legal,
evolutionary one. Cardoso pulled no punches in either his description
of the bleak scenario facing the unions or in his advocacy of the necess
ary solution:
The present panorama is characterised by a retreat of the masses, the majority
of the working class is proscribed, the working-class movement divided and
with a hostile government. Faced with this situation an economic development
is necessary which will break the old structures, without this there can be no
social justice. It is necessary to form a national front in which the different ‘fac
tors of power’ and the working class are united such as occurred in the decade
from 1945 to 1955. The working class is not the only factor of power. Whether
we like it or not the church, the army and the entrepreneurial forces are also
such factors. We must talk to all these groups, and for this the leadership of the
movement must have a vital flexibility.40
The speech provoked virtually no opposition in the meeting. Pedro

Gomis, the petrol workers’ leader, spoke in its support. A more drastic
change from the Rosario meeting and its declaration of the ‘civil resist
ance* could scarcely be imagined. The pro-Frondizi press greeted the
meeting with great enthusiasm.
The only opposition to the speech voiced in the meeting came from
two, relatively minor, delegates. One of them, Alberto Belloni, a del
egate from the Asociaciön de Trabajadores del Estado, was quite clear
as to what the lack of opposition from the other delegates implied:
Cardoso spoke for over two hours ... and for me it was the end of the Resist
ance. ‘We have to reconstruct,’ he said, ‘the “national front” with employers,
the armed forces and the church’ ... and in the meeting there was an amazing
silence; the only ones to get up and oppose this were myself and a Republican
Spaniard from the print workers ... A plenary meeting of more than 200 dele
gates and there was a mortal silence and a tremendous hostility to me and the
Spaniard. My comrade, Américo Quijena, a man formed in the hardest school
of the Resistance, remained seated at my side throughout and never said a
word. And Vandor who was in the chair interrupted my speech two or three
times.41
The silence of the mass of delegates, who twelve months earlier at simi
lar meetings had castigated the 62 leadership for what they regarded as
the betrayal of the strike in solidarity with the meat workers, was testi
mony to the growing sense of confusion and erosion of confidence.
The human core of the Resistance was thus withering away; the
human basis for the militancy and combativity of the 1956-9 period
was being eroded. This was not only manifest in such public expression
as meetings of the 62 Organisations. It was also, and perhaps most fun
damentally, evident at a personal, private level. Jorge Di Pascuale, a
militant leader of the 62 Organisations, recalled how:
the hard struggle was wearing out many people ... the repression was ever
more intense, the Plan C onintes was introduced and conditions got ever more
difficult. There were many comrades who didn’t want to continue along the
path of confrontation and gradually we were losing them ... the majority
began to separate themselves from combative positions and dedicate them
selves exclusively to their own affairs.42
The frenetic pace of the previous years’ militancy, the intensity of ac
tivity and the abandonment of a normal private and social life that this
entailed now began to have a telling impact on many activists. A per
haps extreme, though by no means atypical, testimony to this process
comes from an activist who recalled many years later his own coming to
awareness of the personal price that activism involved:
My brother and I entered the Resistance when we were really just kids. I sup
pose I was eighteen years old when Perön fell, my brother was a little younger.
We devoted most of the following years to union activism - because we were
both pretty good with words we got the job of writing most of the leaflets, all
that sort of thing. Well really we missed out on many of the things kids of that
age normally do. The struggle was everything - the social revolution, the
return of Perön. One day, it must have been in about 1959, my brother and I
were working in our room - it was a Sunday - writing a leaflet. We lived in a
cheap pension which was full of younger workers who had no family in town.
We shared a room with another fellow who worked in the same plant as us - in
fact he was quite a militant himself. He came in from a party and found us
banging away at the typewriter discussing politics. He was amazed and said,
‘But aren’t you two ever going to get to see the face of God?’ He was right of
course and it suddenly hit me all the things we had missed out on.43
It was not only the activists who were affected by this process, it was
also present in a growing fatalism among the rank and file of the unions.
The defeats of 1959, added to the effects of the government’s economic
policy, inevitably took their toll here too. At a meeting called by the
meatpackers’ union in Berisso to discuss how to fight lay offs Eleuterio
Cardoso announced that it was ‘the hour of the bosses’ and that one had
to be realistic and make unpleasant compromises. Cardoso was speak
ing not simply as the archetypical union leader making excuses for a bad
deal but was also touching on a vein of shared experience in the entire
working-class movement. A delegate from the Armour plant in Berisso
echoed Cardoso’s argument at the same meeting: ‘A general strike is
impossible because of the number of dismissals and the general re
cession provoked by the government’s policies; a strike is exactly what
Table 1. Voting figures for eleven major metal-working plants in the

Federal Capital in the 1961 UOM elections
N o. o f A b ste n
w o rk ers tions L .A zul L .R o sa L. V erd e
FA PESA 1.800 929 662 107 102

CAM EA 1.200 574 378 46 202
C e n te n e ra 1.200 762 315 94 102
TAM ET i . 000 530 355 283 32
C A IG E 800 520 144 56 80
F E R R IN I 700 545 83 30 42
R C A V ic to r 500 339 52 16 93
D e ck e r 500 233 136 51 80
V o lc a n 500 189 202 5* 58
L u tz F e ra n d o 5° ° 438 16 2 44
S I A M P e rd rie l 300 223 H 26 37
T o ta ls 9.000 5.282 2,342 762 612
Source: L eaflet issu ed by th e L ista V e rd e o p p o sitio n g ro u p .
the bosses are looking for so they don’t have to pay wages.’44 Both he
and Cardoso were speaking with the resignation of men active in a
union where there were over seven thousand lay offs at this time. The
meatpacking industry had been exceptionally hard hit - suffering not
only from the recession provoked by the stabilisation plan but also
from a long-term structural crisis which was to see the end of the large
foreign-owned freezer plants. But their experience was by no means
atypical; in the absence of counter-examples of victorious, militant
methods the rationale of institutional pragmatism, which was increas
ingly used by the union leaders, was bound to win at least a passive ac
ceptance by the rank and file in most unions.
A clear example of this, albeit reluctant, acceptance in other unions
can be found in the internal elections in the metal workers’ union in
February 1961. In the Federal Capital out of some 97,000 officially
listed members only some 17,085 bothered to vote, a drop of some
8,000 from 1958. The Lista Azul, the Peronist grouping built around
Augusto Vandor and Avelino Fernandez during the Resistance, lost
over half of its votes. In 1958 it had claimed nearly all of the 25,000
votes cast; now it could manage only some 11,053.45 If we look at the
voting figures in table 1 for the eleven major plants in the Federal Capi
tal this can be seen in an even starker light.
The figures show that 58% of the workers abstained from voting in
1 2 4 Frondizi and integration, 19; 8-62
these plants; yet all these factories had voted overwhelmingly for
Vandor in the 1958 elections. In this election in only one of the eleven
plants did the Lista Azul’s vote exceed the number of workers abstain
ing. In the case of the metal workers defeats and compromises led to
abstention rather than voting for rival, anti-leadership candidates. This
was not always the case. Defeat and compromise could lead to more
positive forms of reaction against existing leadership. Even in the metal
workers, for example, in the Avellaneda section the combined vote of
three opposition lists far exceeded that of the ‘vandorist* leadership. In
the textile union some of the major plants were lost by the leadership of
Andrés Framini. In the elections for the internal commission in the
Grafa plant in September i960 the communist list was victorious, beat
ing a dissident Peronist list which had itself broken from Framini.46 In
La Bemalesa and Sudamtex, two of the largest plants in Greater Buenos
Aires, dissident Peronist lists also won over Framings candidates.47 Yet
in general abstention rather than more constructive expressions of dis
satisfaction was the norm in other unions.
The growing resignation and passivity on the part of the rank and file
inevitably had a debilitating effect on the activists who tried to stem the
tide of the retreat. It was not uncommon for local leaderships and
middle-ranking activists to be radicalised under the pressure of man
agement attack and economic crisis; but this radicalisation had less and
less rank-and-file basis. A militant in Avellaneda, active in these years,
recalled an example of this phenomenon:
I remember that José Vazquez became the leader of the Frigorifico La Negra.
He was a muchacho who had made his name after 1955 and had a good follow
ing in Avellaneda, and was on the 62 and the local CGT. When the crisis hit the
freezing plants in i960 and they started laying off people he gave a very militant
lead and called the plant out on strike. But the heart of the bases was not really
in it. They felt that the frigorifico was doomed and they soon started to look
for other work. At one stage toward the end it got so bad that Vazquez himself
had to do practically everything, he couldn’t even find workers to give out
strike leaflets so he and a few friends had to borrow a car and go around distri
buting them.48
The growing isolation of the activists became more and more

apparent as the base support for the militancy of the Resistance gradu
ally withered. Those activists who did draw radical lessons were
increasingly separated from the experience of the mass of their fol
lowers:
Those leaders who called for increasing confrontation for more strikes were
increasingly regarded by their bases as some kind of supermen. You just
couldn’t expect to go to these men who had already been on strike, who could
expect no strike pay and who knew how little work there was around and
expect them to join you again on the streets.49
The discrepancy between the experience, commitment and life style

of activists and rank and file in unions is a constant feature which
underlies much of the ambivalence and dilemma of a militant’s life. Part
of the working class, dependent on it for many of his actions, he is
nevertheless in an important sense set apart from it. In times of general
upsurge and confidence the gap can be minimised as leaders and led
converge; in times of defeat and crisis, however, the gap can lead to a
profound isolation and alienation of the militants from the mass of the
rank and file. Raimundo Villaflor and his comrades in Avellaneda tried
to rescue something from the débâcle of the early 1960s. The guiding
force of their group was a militant who was well known in the working-
class zones of the southern part of Greater Buenos Aires, Domingo Bla-
jaquis. Blajaquis had been in ‘virtually every prison in the country*
since 1955.50 Rolando Villaflor, Raimundo’s brother, was not part of
their group and they, half-jokingly called him ‘the beast* for his un
sophisticated opinions and lack of commitment to a militant life. Many
times he would return home to find them meeting, talking politics. He
recalled years later for Rodolfo Walsh one such occasion when he re
plied to their jokes:
But tell me something Greek [Blajaquis], I said, how old are you? He told me
40 odd. And tell me, what have you done with your life up to now? Because I
don’t see that you’ve done very much. You’ve always been in prison ... And
when he said to me that he didn’t have anything I said, Of course, what would
you have if you’ve always been in prison, soaking up a beating, half dead of
hunger, and you a mature man and you’ve got no family, you don’t have any
thing.51
Blajaquis, Raimundo Villaflor and other militants could retreat into the
circumscribed activity of small groups of activists. These militants
might also, in the short term, through their own personal prestige
become a dominant voice at the level of the local union movement - in,
for example, the local 62 Organisations - but this position had less and
less basis in the working class in terms of its consciousness and willing
ness to be mobilised.
The changing relationship between leaders, activists and rank and
Within the unions the growth of resignation and passivity formed the
backdrop to a process of bureaucratisation which was manifested in a
changing relationship between leader and rank and file and a changing
attitude of union leaders and an increase in personal corruption. The
rank-and-file activist and middle-ranking local militants found their
unions to be increasingly inhospitable places. Raimundo Villaflor re
called this happening in the metal workers’ union:
None of us who had led the strike in Avellaneda could return to the union. It
was gradually converted into a sort of mafia. Even the independent numbers
game operators disappeared and everyone had to bank with the union leader
ship. The leaders also began to deal in scrap metal with the bosses. They
amassed fortunes, and surrounded themselves with paid bodyguards.52
By i960 this change was reflected in a clear erosion of internal
democracy. This was particularly noticeable in the growing use of fraud
in union elections. The opposition lists in the 1961 election in the metal
workers’ union, the UOM , issued a leaflet after that election detailing
the fraudulent practices used by the UOM leadership:
With only 48 hours to go to the elections the places where the voting boxes
were to be placed were unknown, as was the day on which they would be
placed in the workplaces; something which the official candidates were not ig
norant of, given that the election committees were not composed of people
from rival lists but only of those from the official list... the electoral list of the
Federal Capital branch, a section with realistically some 65,000 members
showed 95,000 eligible to vote ... no list that did not possess the money of the
official organisation, like Vandor's did, could hope to have so many activists
available for electioneering with expenses paid ... The junta electoral pre
vented the election monitors of the non-official lists from checking the details
of the factory at which a voter worked, nor would they allow them to inspect in
detail the membership cards.53
These manoeuvres were in contrast to the elections of 1958. In that
election no attempt had been made to impugn the credentials of oppo
sition candidates. In 1961 several of the leading activists of the Lista
Verde, the main opposition grouping, had their candidacies ruled il
legal by the officially controlled electoral junta.
There were many other similar cases in other unions. This was part of
the tightening control of the leaderships over the rank and file, and their
diminishing toleration of focal points for the expression of internal dis
sent. This was most clearly evident in the growing control by the
national leaderships over the local plant leaders. This control often
went hand in hand at this time with the purging of rank-and-file acti
vists. In the big factories of the metal-working industry, for example, a
steady process of selective purging of known militants was taking place.
The most militant were fired, many of the internal commissions in the
big factories were dissolved. In the textile union the opposition groups
were claiming in April 1961 that over half of the factories in the suburb
of San Martin, in Greater Buenos Aires, the largest concentration of tex
tile plants in the country, had been intervened by the central leadership
and the plant commissions suspended for 'oppositional activity*.54
Later in the year the.Framini leadership began to invent general secre
taries in many of these factories.55 With the demoralisation and iso
lation of many of the activists this process of asserting central union
control did not necessarily involve overt coercion. Many of the internal
delegates, exhausted by the uphill struggle, were willing to be bought
off, to accept the inevitable.
Many of the leaders who were behind this process had themselves re
cently emerged from the factory floor during the struggle against the
military government. They were not separated from the rank-and-file
activists by years of enjoyment of bureaucratic privileges. It was only
five years since Augusto Vandor had left the shop floor at Philips and
his subsequent role in the Resistance had given him considerable per
sonal prestige with his members. At this time, too, Andrés Framini was
considered to be a hardliner calling for the most intransigent opposition
to Frondizi. Lifestyle and personal habits were changing, but the hard
struggles and bitter conflicts of the past were too near, too shared an ex
perience, for personal corruption to be a complete explanation of the
bureaucratisation process.
A large part of the explanation needs to be sought in the attitudes of
the activists themselves. The fact that they shared the common experi
ence of resistance to the military government, and of the struggles
against Frondizi, created a symbiotic relationship between the national
leaders and themselves. In a certain sense they recognised in their
leaders men such as themselves, usually with the same backgrounds, as
pirations and fallibilities. Indeed on a local level many of the activists of
the 1955-9 period now themselves became part of local union
hierarchies. Their common allegiance to Perön and the Peronist move
ment acted as a further binding in this relationship. Moreover, despite
the fact that the resistance to both the military and Frondizi had been
based primarily on rank-and-file activists and the internal com
missions, there had never been an explicit articulation of the import
ance of this, of the need to have democratically controlled unions. In
the enforced absence of a bureaucratic structure available to be used,
Peronist trade union practice had, as we have noted, become more
democratic. There had been, in a practical sense, very little ground on
which the separation between rank and file and leadership could have
n 8 Frondizi and integration, 19$8-62
been based. The end result of this democratically-based struggle had
been defined as the recuperation of the unions for Peronism through
free elections. Little was said of how these unions were to be run after
the Peronists had regained them and the opportunities for manipulation
of a bureaucratic apparatus had reappeared. There was very little
thought of how to guarantee the continuation of the de facto demo
cratic practice which had flourished after 1955.
The change in democratic practice within the unions should not be
exaggerated. Peronist trade union practice was by no means uniformly
democratic prior to i960 in the same way that the changing nature of in
ternal government at this time was not uniform either. The relationship
between rank and file and leader remained far more open and demo
cratic in some unions than in others. Nevertheless, some such change
did take place and was clearly perceived by the militants. Alberto Bel-
loni, for example, stresses both the original democratic practice and its
subsequent perversion:
When we began as union militants we didn’t even know what a motion for
order in a meeting was; we would ask ourselves, ‘What is this order motion
thing? This motion to close the debate?* But we had a great democratic feeling
... we had assemblies two or three times a month in Rosario; we filled the
local, no meeting had less than 500 attending, sometimes we had 1,500 out of a
union branch of 3,500 members. I used to say ‘C om paneros , this is the order
of the day; if you want to add something do so. Let us elect a secretary for the
minutes and a President for the meeting.* I would always refuse to be elected.
The President had to come from the floor of the meeting. And this used to
happen in other unions too ... But gradually this began to change - caudil -
lismo and personalism began again. The secretary general was the caudillo , the
capo, the big macho. But originally, starting from a total ignorance of bureau
cratic procedures we arrived at an ultra-democratic practice.56
Most probably the case of Belloni’s union in Rosario was extreme
and represented the far end of a spectrum of democratic practice. It
seems unlikely that a majority of other Peronist unions shared the same
naiveté with respect to formal bureaucratic procedures. Most were
probably situated closer to the middle of the spectrum. But Belloni’s
case is significant and worthy of attention. N ot being a Peronist he had
a particular sensitivity to changing attitudes with the unions, to chang
ing margins of tolerance within a union’s internal government. The
very fact that he, a non-Peronist, was a leading figure in a Peronist
union grouping was itself testimony to a relative openness within
Peronist unionism in the immediate post-1955 period. However, he
recalls the results of his open opposition to Cardoso in the May i960
meeting of the 62 Organisations:
The national committee of the 62 pressured my union to withdraw my creden

tials as their representative on the 62. An agreement was made that I shouldn’t
go to the plenary meetings. They began to close the doors to me, a non-
Peronist, and I began to lose ground within the union. When the Resistance
exhausted itself there was a frustration, a tiredness in the bases, they went less
and less frequently to the meetings.57
N or was this change in attitude only noticeable at the national level.

While Belloni notes that the fact that he was not formally a Peronist had
not been held against him before, his isolation at a national level now
had an effect on his Peronist comrades in Rosario. All militants who
had emerged during the Resistance, all sharing the same original orfan-
dad burocrdtica, they too ‘now began to isolate me, to treat me with
suspicion. These comrades were for me becoming bureaucrats, too, in a
small way.*58
Personal corruption also formed part of this process. A common
charge levied against individual union leaders at this time was that of
having been suborned by Frondizi. The accuracy of such charges is im
possible to ascertain. It seems probable, however, that corruption
tended to be indirect in character. It was widely rumoured, for
example, that the moderate attitude of the national meat workers’ fed
eration during the Lisandro de la Torre occupation and strike was
largely due to the fact that under the new ley de carnes the federation
was to be granted funds for its social services in ratio to the amount of
meat exported. The federation received some eleven million pesos from
this arrangement in 1959.59 This sort of subornation - of the spirit
rather than of the individual pocket - was common not only among
national leaders but also among middle-ranking activists.
The opportunities for enrichment, or for simply a far more comfort
able life within the union system increased greatly at this time and inevi
tably attracted even those militants who had most selflessly immersed
themselves in union activity. The rewards for compromising, for
accepting a quiet life were considerable. Belloni recalls that in i960 the
salary paid to workers’ representatives in the pension fund institutes was
35,000 pesos. John William Cooke writing to Perön shortly after the
January 1959 strike accurately foresaw what was to be the dual attrac
tion of Frondizi’s strategy toward the Peronist unions. He told Perön
that ‘from now on there will be more repression, more prison and more
truncheons. But there will also be much more money and many more
facilities for those who want to come to some arrangement with the
government. In every sphere the aim will be to try and weaken Peron-
ism by means of a practical integration.’60 It was on the basis of this sort
of ‘corruption* that many activists took up positions within local union
hierarchies as local representatives of national leaderships.
The dilemma of the militants: the logic of institutional pragmatism

The basic issue underlying the process we have been analysing was the
acceptance at the level of rank and file, activists and national leaderships
of the logic of institutional pragmatism. The logic was inherent in trade
union involvement in the day-to-day dealings of an industrial econ
omy; the need to take advantage of the opportunities the system was
prepared to offer. This, in turn, was based on a recognition that the
situation facing the unions under Frondizi was different from that
under Aramburu. While being very far from the harmonious utopia
envisaged by developmentalist propaganda there had, nevertheless,
been significant changes. The unions were, for example, faced with the
reality of an increasingly complex industrial relations system. Law
14.455 °f Professional Associations, while assuring the state a role in
overseeing the unions, did also guarantee legally the existence of a cen
tralised, industrial union system with enforceable bargaining rights and
provide the financial basis, through dues collection, for the rebuilding
of a powerful union apparatus such as had existed under Perön. Fron
dizi had also installed a system of compulsory conciliation and volun
tary arbitration which, again, assured the state a role in industrial
relations but also reinforced the functioning of the unions’ bargaining
rights with a new set of rights and obligations. The restoration of the
union pension funds and union representation in their administration
was another example of this growing complexity and intertwining of
unions and government.
The implications of this more complex situation for the Peronist
union leadership were clearly evidenced in what became known as the
‘Cardoso Case’. After his speech at the May i960 meeting of the 62 O r
ganisations Eleuterio Cardoso, the leader of the national federation of
meat workers, was faced with signs of displeasure on the part of Perön
with the sentiments he had expressed. Sebastian Borro, on behalf of the
leadership of the 62 Organisations, had gone to Madrid, Perön’s new
place of exile, and brought back a letter denouncing the concepts
expounded by Cardoso and Pedro Gomiz. At the fifth national
congress of the meat workers’ federation several weeks later, Cardoso
in his opening speech restated the legalist, evolutionary concepts he had
argued for in May:
Resistance and defeat 1 31
The executive committee has struggled for respect of the rights acquired by the
workers ... we were careful that the state organisms recognised and acted on
whatever violations of these rights took place. This attitude of basing ourselves
on legal resorts did not always bear fruit but it did allow us to keep intact the
union structures which were constantly threatened ... no social class has
shown greater effort in the defence of constitutional legality than the working
class, because the rule of law is for workers’ organisations the same as oxygen
in life .. . as a citizen I am absolutely loyal to the Peronist movement and its
leader ... as a workers’ leader, however, I cannot lead my union by ways and
tactics which experience has taught me are impractical and counterproduc
tive.61
Cardoso offered his resignation which was rejected by the delegates.
In his closing speech to the conference he attacked those who would
‘undermine the morale of the masses, turning them against everything
and everyone*. He again stressed the need to be realistic and adapt tac
tics to the realities of the situation. This reality included, above all, a
legal system which gave workers and unions rights which they must use
and defend. Several weeks after the conference Cardoso was expelled
from the Peronist movement and from the 62 Organisations for disloy
alty to Perön and the movement.
Now, what is noteworthy about the sentiments expressed by Card
oso is their absolute reasonableness; they represent, as it were, typical,
common sense statements from a union leader. Cardoso’s reiterated
emphasis on the need to be evolutionists, to work within the system
was, in practice, a view which had to be shared by other Peronist union
leaders. They could not afford, for example, to be unconcerned about
the fate of Frondizi’s government when it was confronted with military
threats. However illegitimate they might consider his government, the
fact remaind that ultimately Frondizi’s legality was a legality which in
cluded the Law of Professional Associations. Union leaders had to take
into account the possible repercussions of their mobilisations on mili
tary unease. Between January 1959 and April 1961 there were seven
major military ‘incidents’ involving challenges to Frondizi, all of which
involved military dissatisfaction with law 14.455.
In a similar fashion, however much they might dislike Frondizi they
could in practice see no viable strategy to replace him. The logic of
being trade union leaders inevitably involved them in bargaining, com
promising, taking advantage of and insisting on the rights granted them
by the system. This was clearly shown in the negotiations concerning the
handing back of the CGT to the unions. Cardoso and others had argued
that the handing back of the CGT was a number one priority for Peron
ist unions, and that a moderate stance should be taken to induce Fron-
1 3 2 Frondizi and integration , 195 8-62
dizi to proceed with the promised return. This position was rejected by
the 62 Organisations in 1959 and i960. To accept the return of the CGT
on Frondizi’s terms would, it was argued, merely involve the unions
increasingly in compromise and negotiations and give credibility to an
illegitimate government. When, however, in late i960 Frondizi called
for discussions to set up a joint committee of Peronist and non-Peronist
unionists to arrange for a CGT congress it proved impossible, in prac
tice, for any Peronist union leader to ignore the call. A regained CGT
would be an obvious step forward in terms of organisation and
working-class unity, even if it were also a step toward integrating
Peronist unions in a status quo which excluded the direct return of
Perön or Peronism to power.62
Yet, if the logic of integrationism was unanswerable, in practice it
was, nevertheless, not readily accepted. This was primarily because of
the very bitterness of the conflicts of 1959, the harshness of the defeats
and the repression that followed. Frondizi’s integrationist plans were
implemented in the wake of a stabilisation plan which had drastically
cut living standards and which had been backed up by managerial and
state repression. Involvement in bargaining, compromising and
defending what would ultimately be seen as stake in the system inevi
tably involved the shelving to some vague, long-term future the princi
pal aspirations which had underlain the working class’s struggle since
1955, above all the return of Perön. Indeed the openly stated aim of
Frondizi’s policy was precisely the divorce of Perön from the move
ment and in particular its union wing. The institutional interests of
union leaders would prevail over the more general political interests of
the Peronist movement. It was this conflict of interests that Cardoso
had frankly expressed at the fifth congress of his union and which had
also surfaced in the first months of Frondizi’s government.
The resistance to the logic of integrationism turned to the one terrain
where it felt confident - the morality and values which had formed part
of the lived experience of the resistance to Aramburu and Frondizi and
which were, as we have shown, a crucial ideological legacy of that ex
perience. Cardoso’s arguments were condemned because they were
considered to be betrayals of the heroism and suffering of the whole
working class, and of the activists in particular, as well as personal dis
loyalty to Perön. Integrationism’s chief evil was seen to be the per
sonal cowardice and betrayal it induced in certain leaders. At the May
i960 meeting of the 62 Organisations the coordinating committee had
presented an information document analysing the general situation of
the movement:
We have seen comrades who for hidden reasons or owing to a weakness of

spirit have abandoned the struggle ... hiding themselves under the cover of
their unions in simple administrative tasks which allow them to stay at the head
of their unions without giving a real lead to workers. Not only is one a traitor
when one commits an act of surrender to the enemy but also when for reasons
of ambition and personal comfort one tries to defend a position of compromise
without confessing the real truth which is cowardice in confronting the
common enemy; the executive power.63
This document, written very much under the influence of the most
militant sector of the Peronist union movement, pointed clearly to an
important phenomenon - the demoralisation of a certain level of leaders
and activists - but failed to situate the roots of this in the defeats of 1959
and the general problems facing the union movement. Instead it placed
the onus firmly on personal moral qualities: ‘When we see reactionary
bosses united in a common campaign to destroy workers* organisations
it is necessary to look within ourselves and understand that more than
the advance of reaction what we are seeing is the retreat of the timid and
the vacillating.* The nature of the intransigent line, what was to be
called the Unea dura, emerges clearly from this document. In particu
lar what becomes clear is its fundamentally moral stance. Recognising a
growing demoralisation and tendency to compromise, these militants
saw the problem as essentially one of vices such as timidity, vacillation,
cowardice and dishonesty. The solution they proposed was an empha
sis on the, equally subjective, virtues of hardness, intransigence and
loyalty; of keeping faith with ‘those who had struggled* and suffered
for it and keeping faith with Perön.
The potency of this stance should not be underestimated. It provided
at the very least an emotionally satisfying standard of conduct in diffi
cult times. The Unea dura was formally in a majority within the 62 O r
ganisations throughout the Frondizi government, led by Jorge Di
Pascuale, Sebastian Borro, Juan Racchini and Juan Jonsch. A ‘soft line’
hardly existed in any real sense; few union leaders could bring them
selves to publicly agree with Cardoso. But, ultimately, morality was
not a sufficient shield, nor a feasible basis for a specific union strategy,
though it could provide a meaningful basis for the actions of individual
militants and workers. At one time the possibility had seemed to exist
for the development of a radical ideology from within Peronism which
might have adequately expressed in formal ideological terms the mili
tancy and sense of class conflict which permeated this period. Cer
tainly, the potential for this was present in the elements of a
counter-discourse which emerged from the 1955-8 period. The general
1 3 4 Frondizi and integration, 19;8-62
institutional conjuncture, the defeats and demobilisation of 1959 and
after, all conspired against such a development. In the last resort the
linea dura became a state of mind, an attitude, a ‘structure of feeling*
rather than an articulated, political, ideological position. For many
militants this did not seem to be a disadvantage and, indeed, morality,
hardness and ‘keeping faith’ gave a militant core of Peronist unionism
the ability to survive the abandonment of hopes and the disillusionment
of the following years. For others the growing power of the union
hierarchy and the logic of compromise would lead them to either com
promise with this hierarchy or to seek a coherent ideological and organ
isational alternative in the theories of focismo and guerrilla struggle.
6
The corollary of institutional
pragmatism: activists, commandos
and elections
All of us who were going to make the Peronist revolution at this time
lacked a formal revolutionary politics; we, of course, had a profound
Peronist fervour and an inborn feeling rather than conviction. We lacked
a revolutionary formation. We did everything under the influence of
something which came from our guts rather than from our heads.
Anonymous Peronist militant, 1973
Productivity, rationalisation and internal control under Frondizi

The modernisation of Argentine industry based on the creation of an
adequate capital goods industry and the production of intermediate
consumer goods proclaimed by developmemalist propaganda implied
the effective introduction of rationalisation agreements which would
enable the efficient use of much of the machinery being imported and
the intensification of output from existing plant. This in turn was pre
mised on the effective control of the power of the internal commissions.
Galileo Puente, the subsecretary for labour, in his speech to the indus
trialists attending the seminar on industrial relations, had defined the
problem in familiar terms: ‘When I took over the problem of labour re
lations I found anarchy, abuses and outrages of all sorts from the
workers. The employers had lost control of factories; the internal com
mission ran everything; those who should obey were in fact giving the
orders ... the employers must therefore retake control of the fac
to ries/1 Puente was not shy in demonstrating the result of firm govern
ment and management policy in dealing with this problem. In one
textile firm he had authorised the mass firing of delegates: ‘After the fir
ings production increased and today the factory is a paradise. A little
while ago they inaugurated a new, modern line, the firm has now been
reequipped/2 It was precisely in these areas of concern that major inno
vations were introduced in the contracts signed from i960 on: the
introduction of new clauses concerning rationalisation and incentives,
135
1 3 6 Frondizi and integration, 19$8-62
the removal of many existing clauses ‘hindering productivity* and the
defining and limiting of the powers of the internal commissions. Indeed
the long-drawn-out struggle for the new contracts in 1959 and i960
was centred precisely on the determination by management to force
through the acceptance of new stipulations in these areas. Only after
the defeats of 1959 and i960 were the employers prepared to consider
the full renovation of the contracts.
The textile industry acted as the touchstone in this struggle. From the
beginning of the negotiations for the new contract in July 1959 the
employers had made their position clear. The principal employers* fed
eration, the Federaciön de la Industria Textil Argentina (FITA), in its
first reply to the union demand for a wage hike and a full updating of
other clauses had stated that ‘the furtherance of the discussions remains
entirely dependent on the approval by the labour sector of clauses on
the rationalisation of production*.3 They stuck to this position
throughout negotiations. The union complained in September that ‘the
position of the employers continues to be absolutely intransigent, since
only if we accept rationalisation clauses will they consider a derisory
increase*.4
After weeks of a demoralising strike, negotiations were renewed in
November 1959, but again broken off over management refusal to
modify its demands for the control of the functioning of the internal
commissions. By the middle of January i960 the union had been forced
back to work. While a new contract had been signed with the smaller
firms, the big plants which dominated the industry and which were
grouped in FITA were still adamant. O n 19 January in a last fling, the
Asociaciön Obrera Textil ordered a go slow in the fifty-four biggest
factories in the country. The employers* response was immediate.
Alpargatas and Sudamtex, the pace-setters in the industry, with
Puente’s backing, carried out mass firings which included virtually all
of the internal commissions in the plants. After seventy-two hours the
union retreated and suspended the go-slow. In Alpargatas the workers,
all of whom had by now been suspended, occupied the plant but were
immediately ejected by the police. At the beginning of February both
Alpargatas and Sudamtex began the selective rehiring of the work
force.5 The back of the textile workers* resistance to rationalisation had
been effectively broken.
While the union leadership still in theory denounced rationalisation
schemes, in practice on the factory floor the battle had been lost and
there was little chance of opposing them. As a textile militant explained:
The corollary o f institutional pragmatism i37
It is true that the leadership and the national negotiating committee have re
peatedly declared that they are not going to sign any contract on the basis of
rationalisation. But in practice these good intentions remain simple declar
ations of intent since with the weakening of internal organisation the bosses
apply their new systems when and where they like.6
Another militant explained that ‘there are several ways for them to get
what they want: either they pay off the delegates with a good indemnity
or they simply close the factory as they did at Piccaluga and Marulana
and when they reopen they start with the new work system’.7
What rationalisation effectively meant in the textile industry can be
seen from the case of Alpargatas. Employing over 10,000 workers it
was by far the biggest textile plant in the country and it dominated the
working-class suburb of Barracas in the Federal Capital. What hap
pened in Alpargatas was very much a testing ground for the rest of the
textile industry. After the reopening of the plant in February i960,
time-and-motion studies were put into effect, ‘the technicians of
rationalisation’, as the workers called them, began to appear on the fac
tory floor. The rank-and-file newspaper, El Alpargaterot produced by
militants in the plant, summarised the impact of the new management
policy in the following months:
The bosses maintain that when a modification is made which diminishes the
task of the worker it is necessary to increase his* task load so as to maintain his
rhythm of work at a constant level. This is what they are doing in Alpargatas in
any section where they instal new machines. Let’s give an example: in Section
A 5 where they perform the toeing and heeling operation on the sneakers. This
year they have installed new machines which do not require the tremendous
physical effort needed for the old ones ... the work is now much lighter but
the bosses now demand that instead of 75, 91 or 98 dozen pairs which they
made on the old machines they now have to complete 316 dozen as an average
figure. There is, therefore, no alleviation of the physical stress but rather a
greater exhaustion.8
Together with time-and-motion went other innovations. There was
an attempt to improve personnel relations - copies of handbooks on the
subject were given out to supervisors in the plant. These contained
advice on the need to ‘advise them before hand of the changes which
will be introduced’, and ‘persuade them to accept the change*. Music
was also now to be provided to improve the workplace ambience.9 N ot
all of the increased production was due to rationalisation in the strict
sense of the word. A considerable portion would seem to have resulted
from greater output from existing machines, often with a reduced
workforce.10 In Alpargatas, for example, in the cardas section each
1 3 8 Frondizi and integration, 7 9 ; 8-62
worker had been in charge of twenty cards in 1948, thirty in 1958 and
after January i960 the number had increased to sixty. No new machin
ery had been introduced. In the sisal section time-and-motion studies
had reached the conclusion that instead of fifteen workers on each turn
only eleven were actually needed. Four workers were dropped from
each shift. Again, no new machinery accompanied this change.11
Militants in the plant were not slow to point out the significance of
such policies. Communist workers in the plant, for example, argued
that: ‘the increase in productivity is therefore the result of different fac
tors: an increase in physical effort of the worker, rationalisation of the
organisation of the workforce, transformation of the machinery,
together with the start of “ personal relations” schemes and the re
pression of the unions’.12 Official recognition of this reality on a
national level came in the contract eventually signed in early 1961.
Article 3 of the new contract affirmed that: ‘The norms contained in
this article applicable to productivity plans with new work systems
shall not be interpreted as hindering or limiting the employers in the
exercise of their powers of leadership and organisation, which are en
tirely their own . .. the employers will direct and organise the work in
their establishments in the form which they consider best serves the
necessary coordination of material elements and labour power with the
goal of obtaining optimum levels of production.*13 Alvaro Alsogaray,
the Minister of Economy, congratulated the union on being ‘so realistic
and signing the contract’; the union itself claimed it had made the best
of a bad situation. The opposition inside the union undoubtedly voiced
the feelings of many textile workers: ‘The contract authorises the
changes of sections, the moving about of a worker from one job to
another, the lowering of a worker’s category and the increase of the
machines tended by a worker without our getting a cent for this
increase in production.’14
An identical process was also taking place at this time in the metal
working industry. The contract of 1959 had simply been an emergency
increase. However, in this industry too, with the growing demoralis
ation and fatalism of the rank and file and militants faced with unem
ployment and the failure of mass actions there was a de facto
introduction of rationalisation schemes. This was initially met by con
siderable opposition from the workers. Indeed, by early i960 some
thing approaching a mass abandonment of incentive schemes by the
workforce had occurred in the industry. Workers rejected employers’
attempts to unilaterally alter job rates and resolved instead to ‘work
normally’. The employers retaliated with mass dismissals and lockouts.
The corollary o f institutional pragmatism 139
The union was in a bad position to bargain given the economic re
cession and by July i960 they had signed a contract negotiated in a
matter of days without a single strike.
The concessions contained in terms of rationalisation schemes were
total, even exceeding those of the textile contract. Article 83 simply
stated:
The systems of bonuses and other forms of incentive schemes do not constitute
a proper matter for this contract ... the UOM and/or its delegates in the dif
ferent establishments cannot oppose the revision of existing schemes when it
becomes clear that failure to adapt wage systems, methods of work, the reno
vation of machinery will detract from the higher goal of giving incentives to
optimum production.15
This clause represented what was a virtual carte blanche for manage
ment in the field of production relations; the union abdicated the right
to help determine manning, speed, quality control or shift arrange
ments. Similar contracts were signed in virtually every industry in the
following years.
The cumulative effect of these clauses was to considerably worsen
working conditions in many industries. ‘Hindrances to productivity* -
one of the employers* chief complaints since the Perön era - were now
removed on a wholesale basis. The most important gains for employers
concerned labour mobility within the plants. Labour contracts had,
since 1946/8, included fixed job classifications and wage rates appro
priate to such job descriptions. Nearly all contracts also contained wage
stability guarantees in case of changes in such classifications, and, in
general, contained clauses limiting mobility within the production pro
cess. All this tended to dissuade employers from reducing manning
levels - one of the principal aims of rationalisation. The job categories
provided workers with the legal basis for costly demarcation disputes as
they used the existing job descriptions to oppose new production
arrangements. The new flexibility management enjoyed after i960 with
regard to mobility of labour within their plants enabled them to effec
tively by-pass existing job categories and in practice create new ones on
a plant-by-plant basis without any formal nationally-negotiated modi
fication of job descriptions.
Underlying the concern of Argentine employers and the state with
increased rationalisation and the removal of ‘hindrances to produc
tivity* there had been, since the last years of Perön, a fundamental con
cern with power on the shop floor as embodied in the internal
commissions. From José Gelbard to Galileo Puente the refrain had
1 4 0 Frondizi and integration, 19;8-62
remained the same: shop-floor power had to be curbed if management
was to be able to reassert its control over production. It was in the wake
of the defeats of 1959 that formal limitations on, and control of, shop-
floor organisation were accepted by the unions and built into the collec
tive agreements. This was often a formality since internal commissions
were already in considerable disarray owing to management and state
repression and the growth of unemployment. The metal-working
industry led the way in imposing restrictions on the commissions. In
the course of the 1959 strike the employers’ organisation, the Federa-
ciön Argentina de la Industria Metalurgica, made public a project for
the regulation of the commissions. The nature and extent of manage
ment concern are clearly apparent in these proposals. The main propos
als were that: a delegate should not present any proposals to
management if he had not first gone to his superior and waited five
days; a delegate should be at least twenty-five years old, with two years
experience in the plant and four in the union, together with a good con
duct record; delegates were not to be allowed to oppose the orders of
management concerning the arrangement of production; shop-floor
meetings were not to take place within working hours, and delegates
were not to be allowed out of their section without written permission
from the head of their section.16
The emergency contract which ended the 1959 strike did not deal
with the issue of the internal commissions but the July i960 contract
contained most of management’s original proposals. Article 82 of the
contract detailed the proportion of delegates to workers in a plant, the
requirements a delegate needed to meet in terms of age and experience,
the procedure the internal commission had to use in dealing with
employers, the specific areas of appropriate concern for a shop-floor
delegate. Finally strict limits on a delegate’s ability to move around the
factory were introduced.17 Similar restrictions were to be found in most
of the contracts signed in other industries in the following years.
The results of this process were soon apparent in economic terms.
Whether it was in clearing the ground for the introduction of new tech
nology or in enabling the increased exploitation of existing plant
through new manning schedules and work intensity, the new contracts
signed after 1959 had a marked effect on industrial productivity.18
There were, however, other, less obvious results which speak to the
process of militant decline and the growth of union leadership power
and autocracy. The clauses introduced in the contracts of i960 and after
gave employers, as we have seen, a free hand concerning production
arrangements and work systems. In doing this a whole series of issues
The corollary o f institutional pragmatism 1 4 1
around which rank-and-file interest in union activity could have been

built were, de iure, precluded from the internal commissions* area of
legitimate concern. Shop-floor organisation, to be viable, needs to base
itself on those areas of immediate concern to a worker on the shop
floor. The strength of the commissions during the Resistance had been
precisely based on their perception by the rank and file as the only
viable means of defending shop floor-conditions. This whole area of ac
tivity was now undercut. Issues on which delegates and commissions
had previously bargained, and in so doing gained strength, were now
removed from the legitimate constituency of the commissions. We may
take a typical example: grievance procedures. The textile contract of
1961 specifically removed the issue of workers* dissatisfaction with the
new work arrangements based on time-and-motion studies from the
hands of the internal commission. The resolution of such grievances
was placed first in the hands of a special section of the national bargain
ing committee and beyond that in the hands of the Ministry of Labour.
This greatly limited the scope for potential activity of the internal com
missions.
The possibilities, therefore, for the internal commissions to play a
dominant role in organising and expressing working-class aspirations
within the factories were becoming by the early 1960s very bleak. This
was compounded by the fact that the dominant form of rationalisation
scheme introduced involved one form or other of payment by results.
Payment-by-result piecework schemes have in some instances, as for
example in British engineering after the Second World War, become the
basis for a strong rank-and-file organisation. In Argentina, however,
the potentially positive side of these schemes was effectively precluded
since the very context within which they were to be implemented was
now deemed management’s sole concern. Indeed in most cases even the
setting of bonus rates and other rates for the job were now considered
to be management prerogatives. In the metal-working industry, for
example, Article 83 which started by affirming that ‘systems of bonuses
or any other forms of incentives do not constitute a proper concern of
this contract* was usually taken to give employers the right to unilat
erally set the rate for the job. The use by shop-floor representatives of
the rate for the job as a bargaining tool with management over changes
in production schedules such as speed up, shift arrangements and
labour mobility, and the building up of a strong rank-and-file organis
ation around such bargaining power, were simply not possible. This
left only the deleterious, divisive effects of payment-by-result
schemes. Thus, while the introduction of the new work systems and the
1 4 2 Frondizi and integration, 19$8-62
control of the internal commissions was based on the concrete defeats
of 1959 and i960, and the consequent demoralisation and demobilisa
tion of rank-and-file organisation, the very nature of the rationalisation
clauses in turn served to perpetuate and reinforce this, to confirm the
decline of militant shop-floor organisation and the growth of rank-
and-file apathy.
The union leaderships clearly benefited from this process. In many
ways the implementation of the productivity offensive most clearly
symbolised the attraction of ‘integrationism’ for the Peronist union
hierarchy. In return for the control of the internal commissions and the
acceptance of rationalisation, concrete benefits were gained from the
leaderships* point of view. N ot least was the formal recognition of the
function of ‘responsible* unionism. This was symbolised in the high-
powered negotiations which now took place in the offices of the Min
istry of Labour when an important contract came up. The provisions of
the contracts did, moreover, confirm this. For the first time since the
early 1950s the union leadership could be seen to have achieved the
proper renovation of clauses in the contracts. The clauses in the agree
ments concerning areas such as maternity benefits, the bonus for the
birth of a child, time off for marriages, additional bonuses for years of
service, all of which had been effectively frozen since the early 1950s,
were now brought up to date. There was, therefore, a quid pro quo
involved in the acceptance of rationalisation. The contracts gave a con
siderable boost to the weakened financial state of the unions. The textile
union, for example, obtained a retention of 150 pesos from the salary of
each textile worker under the provision of the 1961 contract.19
The bargaining and administrative functions of the unions were not,
therefore, weakened by the acceptance of rationalisation. The produc
tivity offensive was aimed fundamentally at shop-floor power, not at
the unions per se. Indeed the union leadership itself had a growing in
terest, as we have shown, in controlling this power. The imposition of
managerial control and the weakening of delegate power also implied a
greater facility for the union hierarchy in the control of its own mem
bership. In fact, by writing the control of the internal commissions into
the contracts the employers had succeeded in identifying their concern
in the matter with that of the union leaders. The onus for the policing of
the commissions was placed firmly on the shoulders of the union
leadership as the executors of the responsibilities assumed by the union
side in the contracts. To maintain their good faith with the employers,
and their credibility as ‘responsible* negotiators, they had to be seen to
enforce the clauses of the agreement.
While the productivity offensive was premised on the control and

elimination of autonomous rank-and-file action there was an intrinsic
ambiguity to this process. The delegates themselves were granted a cer
tain place in the emerging union apparatus by the new contracts. If they
were willing to accept the crucial restrictions placed on their activity
then there were certain rights and recognition accorded; they were for
mally recognised by management as union representatives. Moreover,
we should bear in mind the logic of the situation facing the Peronist
rank and file after the defeats of 1959 and the concomitant weight of
pragmatic realism which was so powerful an element in the attraction
and acceptance of ‘integrationism’. There was, ultimately, an important
element of acceptance of productivity clauses and the limiting of shop-
floor power on the part of the union membership. They were, by i960,
generally prepared to accept rationalisation clauses in return for wage
rises. The spectre of unemployment and the drastic fall in real wages in
1959, coupled with the failure of militant action to obtain decent wage
rises meant that the offer of a money rise, and the renewal of clauses re
lating to fringe benefits, in return for rationalisation agreements seemed
to most workers the only practical way left to try and recoup the
decline in their living standards.
The clandestine groupings: the second stage

As the space available for independent militant activity in the unions
became more and more restricted so, too, did the perspectives for effec
tive action by the clandestine groups. The special formations had been
ordered to cease operations during the opening months of Frondizi’s
government. They had, formally at least, become involved in the
attempts undertaken in those months to reconstitute the political wing
of the Peronist movement. They had been represented on the Consejo
Coordinador y Supervisor del Peronismo after its foundation in O c
tober 1958. With the growing conflict between government and unions
in 1959, and the dashing of any possibility of a legal political expression
for Peronism, the special formations once again became active.
Throughout 1959 bombings steadily increased as the confrontation
between the government and the working class intensified. There was a
renewed flourishing of the commandos in Buenos Aires and the
interior. There was an attempt to give this resurgence of activity a better
organisational structure than had hitherto existed. A number of new co
ordinating bodies came into existence. A Central de Operaciones de la
Resistencia (COR) was formed under the direction of retired General
1 4 4 Frondizi and integration , 19}8-62
Miguel Iniguez. In charge of implementing the orders which came
from COR was the Agrupaciön Peronista de la Resistencia Insurre-
ccional (APRI). Under its command, in theory at least, were a number
of local commandos operating mainly in Buenos Aires and to a lesser
degree in the provinces. To facilitate communications between dif
ferent organs and to ensure an effective chain of command there existed
also a Comando Nacional de Comunicaciones headed by a retired lieu
tenant, Eloy Prieto.
It is difficult to assess how effective this new organisational structure
was in achieving the desired coordination. As always when analysing
clandestine activity we must tread warily between fact and fiction, sub
jective desire and objective fact. While the initial spontaneous chaos of
1955/6 was avoided, the effectiveness of the restructuring should not be
exaggerated. Difficulty in assessing the effectiveness of this renewed
clandestine activity comes largely from the sources available. O n the
side of the government and security forces there was an obvious ten
dency to exaggerate the extent of the overall planning of subversive ac
tivity. Every action was propagandised as part of a coherent, large-scale
plot to overthrow the status quo. This was particularly true of the
armed forces after they had taken overall charge of the security situ
ation with the introduction of the Plan Conintes in March i960. To
justify their newly assumed powers they undoubtedly exaggerated the
degree of efficiency and planning existing in the Peronist Resistance.
They tended to see an unbroken line of responsibility for every terrorist
action stretching from Perön personally, through the Consejo Coord-
inadoYy down to the local resistance commando.20 On the other side,
for equally evident reasons, the Peronists themselves were wont to
exaggerate the efficiency of their organisation, and the formal titles of
organisations such as CO R seemed to bear witness to a military pre
cision and centralisation of operations.
It is clear, however, that many actions resulted from the initiatives of
very localised groupings. Even the security forces at times admitted as
much: ‘Even if there does exist an overall organising commando, coor
dinating the acts of sabotage and terrorism, many were actually carried
out by cells of isolated individuals acting in parallel and independent
fashion.’21 It is significant, too, that Juan Carlos Brid, a leading partici
pant in several of the chief actions of this period, in his memoirs of these
years makes no mention of the guiding hand of the COR, or of any
other overriding command.22 Partly, independent, localised initiatives
were the result of the relative autonomy granted to cells in any security
conscious clandestine organisation. But other factors were at work too.
Bodies such as C O R and APRI were staffed by retired military officers

who had been weeded out of the armed forces in the anti-Peronist
purges of the post-1955 era. There was often a mutual suspicion be
tween these and other militants of the Resistance. Thus, for example, in
the province of Cordoba retired military personnel had an organis
ation restricted entirely, to themselves.23
The extent to which this renewed clandestine activity corresponded
to an overall plan originating with Perön is debatable. Instructions did
circulate in i960 purporting to come from Perön. They envisaged a
series of escalating stages of the Resistance which would gradually
make the country ungovernable and culminate in ‘the carrying out of
the great national insurrection, during which the clandestine groupings
will constitute the nuclei around which the military forces will be
grouped while the unions paralyse the country.’24 Whether Perön him
self really believed in the possibility of reaching this final stage is
questionable. However, with the openly anti-Peronist repression
taking place at this time, and the evident exclusion of any possibility of
either Perön’s personal return to Argentina or the legalisation of Peron-
ism as a political movement, Perön had little to lose from adopting
such an insurrectional stance. In the face of the virulently anti-Peronist
military commanders in charge of the Plan Conintes the adoption of a
legalist, moderate pose would have meant little. A militant stance, on
the other hand, would enable him to underline his nuisance value and
undermine the position of would-be compromisers in the movement.
The actions carried out during i960 certainly represented the peak of
activity of the special formations during the Resistance. A brief look at
some of the major actions can demonstrate the scope of this activity.
O n 15 February a deposit of Shell Mex Argentina in the city of Cord
oba was blown up, destroying over three million litres of petroleum.
The damage was estimated at 70 million pesos, and there were thirteen
deaths. A month later on 12 March the storage plant of the state gas
company in Mar del Plata was also bombed, with a loss of 1,400 cylin
ders of gas and 10 million pesos of damage. The same day in Buenos
Aires the house of Major Cabrera of the army intelligence service was
completely destroyed in an explosion. In Mendoza on 26 May, the
house of General Labayru, commander of the Andean region, was also
destroyed. At the same time in this region a major road bridge in the
Andes was blown up.25 These actions were carried out against the back
ground of more minor bombings and arson.
The scope of these actions undoubtedly argues a greater depth of pro
fessionalism than had existed prior to 1959. N o actions of comparable
1 4 6 Frondizi and integration , 19^8-62
scope had occurred under the Aramburu regime. The old improvised
canos of 1956/7 were used less frequently. Charges of commercial
dynamite were not used with far more sophisticated timing mecha
nisms. These in themselves required a highly organised back-up struc
ture since most of the gelignite had to be stolen from mines and quarries
outside of Buenos Aires, brought to the city and prepared in safe
houses. The stealing of the explosives was in fact a major function of the
provincial commandos. A commando in Mendoza, led by a retired offi
cer, Ciro Ahumada, stole over 4,000 kilos of gelignite in a raid on the
Huemel mine in early i960. Much of this was later found to have been
used in operations in Buenos Aires.26 Despite the increased scope of the
actions which took place there was still no attempt made to directly
engage security forces in even limited armed actions. Documents found
on one of the leading organisers in Buenos Aires, José Normando
Castro, included detailed plans of the training barracks of the Federal
Police and other police buildings. This may indicate that actions were
contemplated against the police but no direct armed confrontation with
security forces took place in the major urban areas.27
Yet, for all the increased professionalism of the clandestine organis
ations their activities never posed anything like a serious threat to the
stability of the status quo. In fact by mid i960 the repression of the
Plan Conintes had effectively eroded much of the structure of the com
mandos. Conintes was effectively brought into effect in March i960.
Until this time terrorist activity had been investigated by the police and
the militants involved had been subject to the normal legal procedures
of the judiciary. Decree 2,628 changed this by making the police forces
of the Federal Capital and the provinces subject to the authority of the
armed forces, who were now to divide the country into a number of
zones of defence against subversion. Decree 2,639 of 16 March placed
under military jurisdiction all those engaged in terrorist activity, and
set up special councils of war to try them according to military law. An
estimated 2,000 people were arrested under these provisions and per
haps some 500 of them sentenced by the special commissions.28 Many
of these may not have been directly involved in clandestine operations,
since Conintes was used indiscriminately against union activists too. By
mid i960, however, it had effectively done its job.
The last fling of the clandestine groups was an attempted military
golpe of 30 November i960. Under the overall direction of CO R plans
were made to seize certain key military installations. This would then
serve as a signal for the more generalised rising to be accompanied by a
general strike. The rising scarcely got started; Rosario was one of the
few places where anything like an armed conflict took place. With the
failure to take the initial key points the rest of the rising failed. In the
aftermath many of the activists who had evaded the net cast by the Plan
Conintes were now arrested. The attempted rising was the last in a line
of traditional Peronist/military golpes with its antecedents in General
Valle’s rising of June 1956. The action was planned and controlled by
the ex-military personnel centred around Iniguez in the COR and it
was premised on their successfully convincing enough active military
officers to join them and throw in their lot with the rebels. There was
no prior distribution of arms to the civilian commandos waiting to back
up the surrender of these garrisons. The role of the non-military acti
vists was to be a strictly secondary one and they were to receive arms
when and where the ex-military officials deemed appropriate.
What was the relationship between these special formations and the
Peronist trade union leadership and rank and file? The term resistance
as it was used amongst Peronists in the 1950s and 1960s tended to be an
all-embracing, diffuse one covering a wide range of differing activities,
while at the same time blurring the distinctions between these different
activities into a single vague image which was to become ensconced in
Peronist popular culture. In fact, however, the growing differentiation
which we observed in the pre-1958 period between union activists and
the clandestine groups was to become even more accentuated in this
period. In part this was due to the security demands of the more strin
gently organised clandestine groups. The risks of having activists who
were also open union militants were too great, and the demands of clan
destine activity generally required the full-time attention of the acti
vists. Partly, too, it was due to the changing perceptions of
rank-and-file Peronist unionists of the relevance of clandestine activi
ties to them as unionists. With Peronism banned from the unions, and
with outright repression the order of the day, the relevance in both
emotional and practical terms had been easier to perceive. Now the
rather more subtle approach of ‘integrationism’ blurred this percep
tion. Then again, the special formations could not remain unaffected by
the general demobilisation and growing apathy arising from the defeats
of 1959 and i960. Their ability to recruit in the working class was
bound to be affected. To adapt Mao’s, by now hackneyed, metaphor,
the working-class sea in which they might hope to swim was by i960
drying up.
Naturally, there were ties between the two areas. The largest strikes
of 1959 and i960 were all accompanied by a sustained campaign of
bombings and sabotage. During the two-day general strike called to
1 4 8 Frondizi and integration , / 9 J 8-62
support the metal workers in September 1959 there were some 106 acts
of terrorism in Buenos Aires alone, according to official calculations.29
Brid mentions, too, that the blowing up of the gas storage plant in Mar
del Plata was partially at least in response to an appeal for help from the
workers of the state gas company who were on strike.30 The failed golpe
of November i960 had been widely canvassed in the Peronist union
movement, and a promise of a general strike if it showed signs of suc
cess was proffered by some union leaders. On the night of the golpe
union locals were used as gathering points for activists waiting for the
signal to move. In Mendoza, for example, both the UOM building and
the local CGT headquarters were used in this way.31
However, the growing divergence between the two areas of action
was evidenced by the increasing weight within the commandos of the
youth and student sections of Peronism. The commandos tended to
look to these groups for recruitment, rather than to the younger union
militants who had been prominent in the previous period. Those
Peronist unionists who were still most actively involved in the clan
destine actions were those attached to the old CGT Auténtica. Many of
these men were, by now, more like professional revolutionaries than
trade unionists. Often blacklisted for their activism of the early post-
195 5 days, or for their positions in the Perön regime, they had become,
more often through necessity than choice, full-time clandestine acti
vists with little or no direct contact with everyday trade unionism: In
the metal workers’ union, the UOM , there were, for example, men
such as Benito Moya and Armando Cabo, who, while playing a full
time role in the commandos, were at the same time on the payroll of the
union and were close friends of Augusto Vandor, the leader of the
UOM. Others like Avelino Fernandez still took an active role in the
union, but also acted as intermediaries between Vandor and the special
formations when necessary. The union leaderships increasingly adop
ted a pragmatic attitude toward involvement with clandestine activities.
While usually allowing the use of union funds or buildings they avoided
direct links or closer commitments.
There was a price to pay for the immersion of these unionists for such
a long time in clandestine activities, as the Resistance was ground down
by repression, demoralisation and desertion. It was not uncommon for
some of them to drift into the role of paid bodyguards and enforcers of
the decisions of their comrades in the union leaderships. As the oppor
tunities for corruption increased, as the union finances improved and,
particularly in unions like the UOM , the dividing line between the
underworld and union financial operations became blurred, their famili-
arity with weapons and their readiness to use them together with a cer
tain charisma deriving from their past actions, could be put to good use
by the union leaderships. Effectively declassed by their years of clan
destine activity and then left high and dry as the tide of the Resistance
retreated, they found a role as part of the newly emerging Peronist
union hierarchy preferable to an attempt to go back to the shop floor.
Armando Cabo, a prominent member of the metal workers’ leadership
prior to 1955, closely involved in the projected union milita apparently
mooted by Evita, and by all accounts a man of considerable personal
courage during the years of resistance to Aramburu, was to become
from the early 1960s on one of Vandor’s chief enforcers within the
UOM . There were many other cases like his. The lower echelons of the
burocracia sindical were largely staffed by ex-militants of the clan
destine groups.
The political and ideological context within which the second phase
of clandestine activity unfolded was both ambiguous and limited. The
influence of the Cuban revolution was becoming more apparent. The
first guerilla formations, the Uturuncu in Tucuman and the Union de
Guerrilleros Andinos in Mendoza, were founded in these years. Both
were soon crushed by the military before they could begin effective
operations.32 As the Cuban revolution became radicalised in these years
it had a growing impact on activists, both Peronist and non-Peronist, in
Argentina. Guevara’s ‘guerrilla manual* was amongst the documents
captured by the army when they rounded up both guerrilla /ocos.33 At
the same time there was a move away from a reliance on military upris
ings, the search for military leaders who would be faithful to their ‘true’
calling. Some clandestine groups had also rejected the idea that sections
of the armed forces could be persuaded to lead a popular insurrection.
The Comando Nacional Peronista had, for example, in 1959 main
tained that the real problem Peronism had to resolve was ‘the lack of a
revolutionary political leadership of the movement’.34 John William
Cooke came to embody these tendencies. As his correspondence with
Perön clearly shows he had long been contemptuous of would-be mili
tary saviours. By i960 he was in Cuba where he would fight with the
militia at the Bay of Pigs and become an ardent champion of guerrilla
warfare. It is possible that he was involved in the setting up of the UGA
and the Uturuncu guerrilla.35 Cooke attempted to place his advocacy of
guerrilla warfare within the larger perspective of identifying Peronism
with Third World national liberation struggles. As a part of this he
increasingly came to stress the need to turn Peronism into a revolution
ary party with an appropriately defined ideology in place of the gener-
1 5 0 Frondizi and integration, 19^8-62
alised loyalty to a leader which substituted for such an ideology in the
Peronist movement.
These developments must, however, be placed in perspective. While
the growing attraction of the guerrilla strategy was significant it had
only a minor impact on most of the militants of the Peronist Resistance
at this time. There was a general admiration for the m u c h a c h o s in the
sierra, and there is also evidence of collections taking place in factories
in Buenos Aires.36 But the guerrilla was fundamentally supported by,
and composed of, the youth sectors of Peronism and the non-Peronist
left. Most of those who were recruited came from the university
ambience of the Federal Capital and other major university centres.
Much of the logistic support for the attempted fo c o s in the Andes and
Tucuman came from this area too.37 The security forces found that
most of the guerrilla fighters captured or killed were between the ages
of sixteen and twenty.38 Most of the activists in the clandestine groups
still tended to look, with perhaps less and less real conviction, to retired
military figures to lead a g o lp e rather than identify themselves with a
strategy of guerrilla warfare inspired by Cuba. Indeed, there was at this
time a widespread suspicion of Castro among Peronist militants. When
Castro had visited Buenos Aires in 1959 he had been feted by the
sen o ra s g o r d a s of the b a r r io n o r te and lauded in the press of the tra
ditional Argentine left.
Similarly, the growing identification of Peronism with Third World
liberation movements was very much a minority trend. While there was
undoubtedly some discussion among activists about the Mau-Mau in
Kenya and the Algerian struggle against the French, this was rarely fol
lowed through and developed into a clearly worked out ideological pos
ition. We have already commented on the difficulty Peronist militants
had in developing a formal ideological critique of developmentalism, of
sustaining an alternative ideology adequate to the experience of class
conflict; this was equally applicable to the activists of the commandos,
for all their involvement in clandestine activities. Ultimately the politi
cal ideology of many seems to have boiled down to a personal loyalty to
Perön. For these activists the inadequacy of a developed formal philos
ophy was not compensated by the strength drawn from the continuing
validation of values and experience of shared struggle and solidarity,
separated as they were from even the reduced union struggle of the last
years of Frondizi.
Cooke was, therefore, very much an exception, a lone voice speaking
to a very restricted audience within Peronism. His letters to Peron
mirror his increasing isolation; they become a monologue, a litany of
The corollary o f institutional pragmatism 1 51
wishful thinking as he urges Perön to set up his exiled home in Cuba

and commit Peronism to the Cuban brand of Third World liberation.
As his championing of the Cuban experience increased so did the cold
ness and formality of Peron*s replies. The Comando Nacional Peron-
ista was, too, by 1961 of minimal influence within Peronism. With the
failure of the November i960 rising and the success of the Plan Con-
inteSj many activists in the commandos dropped out of activity or came
to terms with the formal apparatus of Peronism. The ideas of people
like Cooke were kept alive in very small groups mostly connected with
the youth and student sectors of the movement.
The lure of politics: the election of March 1962

The success of the Plan Conintes in erasing any ‘insurrectional* per
spective for Peronism and the demobilisation of the union struggle after
the highpoints of 1959 increased the attraction of the ‘pragmatic* option
for the Peronist unions and strengthened Frondizi’s chances of success
fully ‘integrating* them within a new status quo. Certainly, there
appeared to be a greater air of pragmatism about. The 62 Organisations
had, for example, agreed to share power with non-Peronists on the
provisional organising committee set up by Frondizi as a first step in
calling a reorganising conference of the CGT. The committee, known
as the committee of twenty, consisted of ten Peronist union leaders and
ten independents. Frondizi promised to allow the reconvening of the
C G T congress by December 1961. There was, clearly, some risk to
Frondizi in allowing the creation of a new union central, and indeed the
committee of twenty organised a general strike against a proposed
rationalisation of the railroad service, and against a presidential veto of
a new law which would have improved redundancy indemnity. How
ever, these union activities now conformed more closely to what the
government considered to be a ‘legal* opposition, and with the
working-class resistance broken they lacked the explosive potential of
the struggles of 1959. The government began, too, to relax some of the
worst strictures of the stabilisation plan, and allowed something more
closely approaching free collective bargaining. Strikes were not now
automatically declared illegal and unions were able to make up some,
though not all, of the ground lost in 1959 and i960. Government
propagandists, including the most forthright desarrollista press, began
speaking confidently of a new ‘legal stage* the country was entering.
O ther factors seemed to bolster this new confidence. In April Fron
dizi felt strong enough to fire the army commander in chief, Toranzo
1 5 2 Frondizi and integration, 7 9 ; 8-62
Montero; in May Alvaro Alsogaray was dismissed from the Ministry of
Economy. Politically, too, the fortunes of the Union Ci'vica Radical
Intransigente were improving. In April 1961 they had won elections in
Catamarca and Santa Fé, while the conservatives had taken Mendoza.
In all these cases there had been a marked decline in the Peronist voto en
bianco. In elections for the senate in the Federal Capital in February
1961 Alfredo Palacios running for a splinter socialist party won with
308,000 votes to the 232,000 votes en bianco. This seemed to indicate
that the cohesion of the Peronist electoral force was being undermined.
A concomitant of this was the rise of the neo-Peronist parties. Based
primarily on figures from the pre-1955 political apparatus of Peronism
these parties had been allowed to operate by Frondizi. In many prov
inces they were centred around the figure of a local caudillo who had
controlled the provincial apparatus of the Peronist Party prior to Sep
tember 1955. While claiming a general allegiance to justicialist prin
ciples they, in general, did not feel bound to follow the formal dictates
of Perön concerning strategy and tactics in Argentina. They attempted
to fill the vacuum created by the political proscription of Peronism. As
such they were encouraged by the government as an ‘acceptable* Peron
ism. By 1961 a not inconsiderable number of Peronist votes were going
to these parties.
The touchstone for the effectiveness of this hoped for ‘legal stage*
would be the elections of March 1962 when many of the major provin
cial governorships would be contested. There was an intense debate
within the circle of presidential advisers and the UCRI in general as to
the wisdom of allowing direct Peronist participation in these elections.
Frondizi*s decision to allow the Peronists to present their own candi
dates was a tempting, though risky, option for the government. If
Peronism could be shown to do worse than expected then it would be
concrete proof of the efficacy of ‘integrationism* as a strategy for deal
ing with Peronism. It would relieve much of the military pressure on
Frondizi by showing that the political sting of Peronism could be
drawn much more effectively by his policy of controlled concessions
and toleration of a strong union organisation, than by a return to a
policy of outright repression favoured by most sectors of the military.
From Frondizi’s point of view the ideal position for Peronism to take
would be to continue the blank vote or, failing this, to divide their votes
among a wide range of neo-Peronist candidates. If, however, Peronism
contested the elections in its own right then Frondizi's calculation was
that he could still win by presenting himself as the only viable anti-
Peronist force. The gubernatorial elections in Santa Fe in December
1961 seemed to confirm this calculation. The UCRI won, defeating an

amalgam of neo-Peronist forces which had enjoyed official Peronist
backing. One national newspaper was moved to say after this election
that ‘Peronism at present has ceased to occupy first place and is no
longer the enemy that many believe it to be.*39
The situation within Peronism was itself complex. There was a
common recognition that the blank vote was no longer a creditable
tactic. Iturbe, the head of the Consejo Coordinador y Supervisor del
Peronismo, announced in a press conference in June 1961 that ‘Peron
ism was now in a line of legality* and called for a positive vote in future
elections.40 The abandonment of the voto en bianco as a form of repu
diation of what they considered an illegitimate government, and as an
affirmation of intransigent opposition to that government, was not an
easy step to take for many sectors of Peronism. In the course of 1961,
however, most came to share the view expressed by an anonymous
union leader that ‘in the past most sectors of the movement have not
gone beyond the classic formula of the blank vote as a repudiation, a
sanction against the government - motives which may make sense on
the plain of morality but which do not signify anything from the politi
cal point of view*.41
In September 1961 Américo Barrios, a close political associate of
Perön’s, took over the newspaper Recuperation, and under the head
line, ‘The tremendous power of legality*, began advocating active
Peronist participation in the forthcoming elections. At this time
Peron’s own attitude seems to have been to favour abstention with a
positive vote - that is to leave Peronists free to vote for other non-
Peronist parties rather than putting up Peronist candidates.42 When
Peron let it be known in mid January 1962 that he wished to share the
ticket for the governor of Buenos Aires province with Andrés Framini it
was commonly assumed that this was a manoeuvre to scupper the
growing movement within Peronism to run Peronist candidates, since
he was well aware of the unacceptability of his candidacy for the mili
tary. This impression seemed to be confirmed in early February when a
letter was brought back from Madrid in which Peron affirmed that:
‘The present situation in which they want to place us is a deaa end; the
only solution is abstention . . . the government is not going to give
Peronism an electoral opening and we mustn’t waste time waiting for
them.*43
Paradoxically the political wing of Peronism was generally in favour
of this position, since it was increasingly fearful of losing out to the
union wing in a fight for places on any lists of Peronist candidates. They
154 Frondizi and integration, 1958-62
were in addition worried that a union-dominated Peronist electoral
success would provoke a military intervention. They preferred to
gradually penetrate electoral positions in the provinces under the guise
of neo-Peronism. Peron’s own opposition to the movement running
its own candidates was very probably based on similar calculations. A
good showing by a union-backed electoral campaign would give the
unions a negotiating power within Argentine politics which would be,
to a degree, independent of his control. The 62 Organisations had,
from the beginning, been whole-heartedly in favour of participating in
the elections with Peronist candidates. They had also made it clear that
they were not prepared to accept lists of candidates dominated by
figures from the political wing. On 10 January a meeting called by the
CGT Auténtica and the 62 Organisations was attended by 230 delegates
from fifty-seven zones of Buenos Aires province. They unanimously
called for a Peronist unionist to be the gubernatorial candidate of the
Peronist movement. Buenos Aires was divided into seven zones, each
of which would hold meetings under the direction of the 62 to select
candidates for the elections. At the same time the meeting issued a state
ment opposing the proposed candidacy of Attilio Bramuglia, Peron’s
former chancellor, who was being spoken of as a candidate by neo-
Peronist forces.44
With the only effective apparatus in Peronism, and with the finances
to back this up, the unions were able to impose their will. In Buenos
Aires province the formula for candidates was established as six union
ists and one candidate each for the feminine wing, the Partido Labo-
rista, the Union Popular and the Partido Justicialista, and two to be
nominated by Perön himself. In the Federal Capital itself the 62 O r
ganisations announced their list of candidates before any formal agree
ment with other sectors. The list was comprised of Sebastian Borro,
Jorge Di Pascuale, Rolando Garcia of the rubber workers, Eustaquio
Tolosa of the port workers and Paulino Niembro of the UOM . As a
concession a representative of the political groups was included at the
last minute.45 Even after the publication of Peron*s letter in February,
Andrés Framini, the 62*s candidate for governor of Buenos Aires, con
tinued campaigning. A delegation of Vandor, José Alonso of the gar
ment workers, Roberto Garcia and Amado Olmos immediately flew
to Madrid and on 17 February returned to say that Perön had now
agreed to ratify the concurrencista position.
The reasons for the union leaderships* determination to take part in
the election campaign were various. Partly, it was a reflection of the
groundswell of feeling among rank-and-file Peronists in favour of
voting for Peronist candidates as a means of protesting against the Fron-

dizi government; this feeling increased with the deepening economic
crisis that had been evident since the end of 1961. The depth of this feel
ing was illustrated by the fervour with which the campaign was sur
rounded. Beyond this we have Miguel Gazzera’s assertion that the
initial idea to run separate candidates had come from Amado Olmos
and had been taken up by Vandor with the specific aim of forcing Fron-
dizi from office.46 This would seem to be an oversimplification. The
linea dura, which was still dominant in the councils of the 62, undoubt
edly viewed the elections as a potential means of deposing Frondizi; a
Peronist victory would, in Jorge Di Pascuale’s words be ‘un hecho
mas* for Frondizi to contend with. Whether it provoked his overthrow
was not something they should worry about. Indeed some of the hard
liners may well have welcomed this possibility as a way of countering
the debilitating temptations of integrationism.47
A more general feeling, articulated by Olmos and shared by most
union leaders in the 62, including many ‘hardliners’, was that the elec
tions offered an opportunity to establish union weight both within
Peronism and within the Argentine political system. Certainly the
dangers of such a tactic were evident. They must have realised that with
a strong union organisation as the basis of the Peronist campaign there
was a good possibility of victory in several provinces, and that this
could well have serious institutional consequences. It was precisely this
fear which Frondizi had counted on to sway the Peronist unions against
direct participation. Most union leaders felt that this was a risk worth
running on the grounds that even if the military did intervene the
weight gained by the unions because of the elections would mean that
any new government would have to take them into account. At the very
least Peronism and its unions would have demonstrated that they were
the dominant force in Argentine society, and the onus for denying them
their rightful rewards would be seen to rest firmly on the shoulders of
the military.
The effectiveness of the union campaign was borne out by the results.
Peronism was victorious in eight out of fourteen provincial gubernato
rial contests, including the province of Buenos Aires. Frondizi immedi
ately annulled the elections in these provinces and intervened them.
The armed forces had, however, lost all confidence in him and on 29
March, after fruitless negotiations with Frondizi, José Maria Guido,
the vice president was sworn in with an eminently gorila cabinet. The
Peronist unions, after a protest strike at the annulment of the elections
on 23 March, adopted a cautious attitude.
1 5 6 Frondizi and integration, / 9 j # - 6 2
The March elections demonstrated the change of emphasis taking

place within Peronist unionism. The transition from the high points of
the Resistance - the bitter rear-guard struggles of 1959, and the terror
ist campaign of 1959/60 - to the organisation of an election campaign
and the haggling over candidates and offices implied a profound
change. Within Peronism the unions had clearly imposed their own
terms on the other sectors of the movement. The political expression of
the Peronist working class would now be very much bound up with the
union movement. The roots of this can be traced to the original for
mation of Peronism as a movement and the foundation of the Partido
Laborista in the 1940s. While Perön had created a political apparatus to
replace the laboristas the relevance of this as a vehicle for political
mobilisation and expression had remained secondary to the union
movement. The working class’s impact and influence on the state had
been assured primarily by unions and their intimate relationship with
Perön and Evita. The Partido Peronista had little immediate relevance
for most Peronist workers. The formal proscription of Peronism as a
political movement after 1955 and the intensity of the resistance within
the factories and unions had simply confirmed this. Even with the
possibility of the legal recreation of a Peronist party during the halcyon
first months of Frondizi’s presidency the unions and the working class
had shown little real interest in establishing a political apparatus. Now,
with other militant options eliminated by defeat, demoralisation and
rationalisation, the emerging union hierarchy could turn its attention to
politics and develop its peculiarly syndicalist brand of politicking and
power seeking.
Much of this was not immediately apparent, however. The military
coup, the swearing in of a hardline anti-Peronist cabinet, the by now
familiar anti-union and anti-Peronist rhetoric, seemed to herald a
return to the pre-1959 situation. There was, moreover, the fact that for
mally the hardliners like Di Pascuale and Borro were still a majority
within the leadership of the 62 Organisations. As the list of candidates
for deputy in the Federal Capital elections showed they could still
impose their candidates at this level. This was, however, misleading
since it reflected by now their personal prestige in the movement rather
than any real weight within the organisms of Peronism. The figure who
emerged from the election campaign as the really dominant figure was
Augusto Vandor. As head of the Union Obrera Metalurgica, the most
powerful industrial union in the country, he had been the one who had
basically organised the election campaign. The term vandorismo was
being used by friend and foe alike more frequently. The fact that he had
had to accept in the Federal Capital the candidacies of the duros, many
of whom were becoming increasingly suspicious of his power and
intentions, should not obscure his growing influence. Miguel Gazzera,
a close confidant of Vandor’s, aptly summarised the elections and their
results:
Vandor prepared a whole apparatus destined for the elections in the province of
Buenos Aires and other places, which later became the structure of vando-
rismo. This apparatus brought together the legions of aspirants to posts which
arose with the elections, provided the money and all the profuse publicity ...
the fall of Frondizi placed Vandor at the very highest level of political power in
the country.48
The implications of this for Peronist unions and the working class were
to become apparent in the following years.
PART FOUR
The Vandor era, 1962-6

7
The burocracia syndical :
power and politics in Peronist unions
Within the Justicialist score fwanted to call upon the different melodies
... I assigned to Vandor the leadership of the conservative, evolution
ary currents which were the only ones the regime would tolerate; Fra-
mini, on the other hand, assumed the leadership of the revolutionary,
aggressive wing, that of permanent rupture with the system ... both
came to correspond to the different aspects and currents which go to
make up the national, Christian content of our labouring masses.
Juan D. Perön
Vandorism: elements of an image

In late November 1963 management in the TAMET metal-working fac
tory in Avellaneda dismissed some twenty militants belonging to both
the communist union grouping and the dissident Peronist list. The prel
ude to management's action had been the expulsion of these activists
from the Union Obrera Metaiurgica for supposed infractions of union
rules. Once shome of union protection the field was open for manage
ment to act. The assumption by all concerned was that union and man
agement had acted in collusion. Perhaps more significant was the
acquiescence of the internal commission in this process. One of the
activists expelled was in fact a leading member of the cuerpo de dele-
gados, the delegate commission, of the plant. He was expelled from the
union for distributing a leaflet against the original dismissals without
official approval from union headquarters. O f the thirty-eight dele
gates in TAMET only fourteen attended the meeting which expelled
him, and of these only seven actually voted for it.1 The inci
dent, scarcely unique in itself, was eloquent testimony to the extent
of the demobilisation and demoralisation which we have charted in
the previous section of this work. It also exemplified an important
element in the process of integration of the union apparatus into
the Argentine political, institutional system and its corollary of
161
i6i The Vandor era, 1962-6
bureaucratisation and the growing use of autocratic methods to regu
late the internal life of the unions which reached its apogee in the
1962-6 period.
The figure who came to symbolise this process in the minds of both
militants and the Argentine public was Augusto Vandor, the leader of
the metal workers. Vandor came to personify - especially for his
opponents within the Peronist movement - the transformation of the
movement and its unions from a position of outright antagonism to the
post-1955 status quo to one of acceptance of the need to compromise
with it and find a space within its boundaries. Vandorismo came to be
synonymous, on both a political and union level, with negotiation,
pragmatism, the acceptance of the realities of the realpolitik which
governed Argentina after 1955. O n the political plane vandorismo
implied the use of the political power and representativeness which the
unions derived from their position as the dominant force within Peron-
ism and from being the only fully legal part of the movement in order to
negotiate and bargain with other ‘factors of power*.
The image of power and influence within the system was symbolised
on the formal level by the frequent talks between government and trade
union leaders on economic and social issues, and on the informal level
by the equally frequent consultations between Vandor and other union
leaders and politicians, employers’ leaders, prelates and army comman
ders. The sight of the shirt-sleeved and tie-less union leader, Vandor,
entering the Casa Rosada or the Ministry of Labour, or visiting the
Ministry of Defence to consult with the chiefs of the armed forces,
became a dominant element in the social and political imagery of
Argentina at this time and, being constantly emphasised by the media,
reinforced the perception of the Peronist unions as a fundamental, if
conflictual, part of the social and political system. This was an image
which the union leaders readily embraced. The CGT in particular
attempted to bolster this image at both a national and international
level. These years saw a welter of CGT publications and analysis and a
number of conferences on a variety of themes of national import. A
statistical department was created as was a juridical assistance com
mission. Ties were also reestablished with foreign union bodies.
Peronist control of the CGT had been assured in the negotiations
which took place in November and December 1962 preceding the
January 1963 congress which finally marked the formal reconstitution
of the confederation. The 62 Organisations were in a clear majority
position in the labour movement vis-à-vis the non-Peronist unions.
They controlled all the industrial unions and all but one of the local re-
The ‘burocracia sindicaV 1 6 3
gional committees of the CGT.2 The militant anti-Peronist grouping -

the 32 Democratic Unions - had by 1962 virtually disappeared, and the
communist grouping, the MUCS, was restricted to a few small unions.
Most of the large, mainly white-collar, anti-Peronist unions which had
formed the 32 Democratic Unions in 1957, had by this time declared
themselves to be independents. Though not as coherent a unit as the 62
Organisations they shared a common basis in recognising the reality of
the Peronist presence in the unions and the need to find some sort of
working arrangement with them.3 The negotiations which paved the
way for the January congress represented an agreement between the
Vandorist sector of Peronism and the independents. While agreement
was reached in general terms on the equal representation of both sectors
on the central committee Vandor successfully insisted that a Peronist
should be secretary-general. In addition the independent unions also
gave up the vital posts of secretary and pro-secretary of the interior,
and also of union affairs, in return for the lesser posts of assistant
secretary-general and the posts of finance and social welfare. The
secretary-general, elected at the congress in January with Vandor’s
blessing, was José Alonso, the leader of the garment workers. The new
body claimed to represent some 2,567,000 members.4
More fundamentally still, Vandor’s power base outside the metal
workers* union was his control of the 62 Organisations. From the
March 1962 elections on he was increasingly the dominant figure within
the 62 and by 1963 the most intransigent leaders of the linea dura - Di
Pascuale, Borro and Jonsch - had all resigned, or been pushed out of
the coordinating committee. Within the individual member unions the
domination of the emerging Peronist union hierarchy was confirmed as
the process of demobilisation of the rank and file and victimisation of
the activists continued. The economic crisis of 1962-3 saw the culmi
nation of this process. By June 1962 over 40,000 metal workers were
either suspended or permanently without jobs - 20,000 of these were in
the Federal Capital and Avellaneda - as the Argentine economy entered
one of its severest cyclical crises. The situation in the textile industry
was even more desperate. Employers and union leaders often took
advantage of this situation, as in the TAMET case, to rid themselves of
many well-known activists who had survived earlier battles. The ruth
less control of any internal dissent by what was increasingly referred to
as the burocracia sindical was, too, synonymous with Vandorism, as
was the employment of matones (enforcers) to intimidate any such op
position. Tlie plenary sessions of the 62 Organisations, a few short
years before the scene of innumerable rank-and-file demonstrations
1 6 4 The Vandor era, 1962-6
and expressions of disagreement, were no longer in any real sense a
forum for expressing rank-and-file views. They had simply become
part of the apparatus of power at the disposal of the union leadership.
Indeed, the barra (gallery) was now an instrument of leadership con
trol, intimidating any attempt at expression of dissident opinion within
the meetings.5
With their base in the 62 Organisations secure, and their dominant
position within the CGT confirmed, the Peronist union leadership was
ready to make its weight felt in both the social and political fields. In
terms of the social and economic conditions of its members, decisive
action was clearly necessary. By 1962 the Argentine economy had
entered a profound crisis. The industrial leap to the production of con
sumer durables and capital equipment which was at the heart of devel-
opmentalist policy from Perön to Frondizi had made great strides;
Argentine steel production increased sevenfold between 1954 and 1965 ;
auto production rose from 6,000 vehicles in 1955 to over 200,000 in
1965. By 1962 it was becoming clear, however, that there were limits to
the whole process of import substitution. The Argentine market was
too small to provide a steady stimulus to the new dynamic branches of
industry. In addition, the production of more sophisticated durables in
petro-chemicals, autos, and electrical appliances required large capital
inputs in terms of investments, largely from foreign sources, and the
importation of more technologically advanced industrial equipment.6
The attempt to push through expanded industrialisation in this context
led to a deepening balance of payments deficit which could be met in
the short term by foreign loans while awaiting a hoped for expansion of
exports of the new industrial products. This foreign exchange bottle
neck had inevitable inflationary results. As the deficit worsened Argen
tine governments were forced to turn to traditional agricultural exports
in order to pay interest on the foreign debt and maintain industrial
inputs. To increase the value of these exports at a time when world
market prices for them were generally declining Argentina resorted to
successive devaluations. These devaluations helped fuel an inflationary
spiral, especially after Frondizi in January 1959 abandoned exchange
controls. After reaching a high of 113% in 1959 inflation would run at
between 25% and 30% throughout the governments of Guido and
Illia.
The Guido government in 1962 responded to the growing balance of
payments crisis and inflationary spiral by adopting an emergency,
IMF-sponsored stabilisation plan very similar to that adopted by Fron
dizi in 1959. The aim was to restrict industrial production by limiting
The ‘hurocracia sindicaT 1 6 5
credit and squeezing the home market by salary limits and increases in
public tariffs. At the same time a further devaluation attempted to en
courage new exports. The result for the working class was immediate
and drastic: an industrial recession which saw unemployment rise
dramatically in areas such as textiles and metal working and con
tinuing high levels of inflation which inevitably adversely affected real
wages.7
The union leadership’s initial response to the crisis was muted,
largely because of the institutional instability of the second half of 1962
as different factions of the armed forces struggled for domination and
influence on the state. With the resolution of the conflict in favour of
the more moderate faction favourable to a continuation of the civilian
government and the return of the CGT, the union leadership felt confi
dent to initiate a campaign for solutions to the economic and social
grievances of its members. The first stage of this campaign culminated
in May 1963 with a Semana de Protesta against the Guido government’s
economic policies. The climax of the campaign was a 24-hour general
strike. As the economic situation gradually improved in the latter part
of 1963 and into 1964 the CGT increased its campaign to recover lost
ground. Its attempts to pressure the Radical Party government of
Arturo Illia led to the implementation of the second stage of the Plan de
Lucha, in June and July of 1964. The plan .consisted of a series of esca
lated factory occupations which extended to virtually the whole of
Argentine industry. The chief advocate of this tactic in the councils of
the CGT was Vandor and the metal-working industry led the way in
the occupations. Carefully planned, and carried out under the firm con
trol of the union apparatus the occupations were an impressive display
of organisation and discipline. Spread over a five-week period the CGT
claimed that more than 11,000 plants were occupied with more than
3,900,000 workers participating.8
In the political field, too, the union leaders increasingly exploited
their role as the direct brokers of the Peronist electoral following. In
the July 1963 presidential elections the 62 Organisations were the chief
organising force behind the campaign of Vicente Solano Lima who ran
for a Frente Nacional y Popular of Peronists, Frondizi supporters and
popular conservatives. The front was eventually proscribed because of
military pressure and Illia, the Radical Party candidate, was elected
with scarcely 20% of the popular vote. The March 1965 congressional
elections saw the election of a powerful block of Peronist deputies on
the Union Popular ticket. The campaign was predominantly run and
financed by the 62 Organisations. It also saw the election of many
1 66 The Vandor era, 1962-6
union candidates. The head of the Peronist block in congress was Pau
lino Niembro, an intimate associate of Vandor’s from the UOM.
The picture which emerges is, therefore, one of a union leadership
seemingly at the height of its power. The image was a curious amalgam
of factors - ranging from semi-organised gangsterism, which as one
author put it could ‘conjure up the gangsters of American trade union
ism like Jimmy Hoff a',9 right up to the highest level political
manoeuvring and bargaining. If to many militants this union hierarchy
was symbolised by incidents such as the TAMET victimisations, to the
Argentine public, and indeed to rival social and political forces, Vandor
and his union comrades were also associated with the massive mobilis
ation embodied in the factory occupations. To understand the ambiva
lence of this image, the complexity of the phenomenon, we must
examine in closer detail the elements contributing to the power of this
union leadership.
Important factors contributing to the power of the union leadership

The structural base of the institutional power of the unions lay in the
Law of Professional Associations, law 14,455, passed by Frondizi in
1958. Fundamentally the law reinstituted the system, first created by
Perön, of the sindicato unico, that is the legal recognition of only one
union with bargaining rights in any one industry, whether on the local
or national level. Within this overall context the law distinguished three
levels of union organisation and structure. There were unions of the
first degree which in each province and the Federal Capital organised
workers of the same trade or area of industry; a second category was
also recognised which included federations grouping together first-
degree unions from various provinces; and finally there was a third
level of organisation, the confederation bringing together the federa
tions. The important point to note concerning union leadership power
was that although Argentine labour law allowed for either a federative
structure or the more centralised and concentrated union structure of
the first-degree unions, among the largest and most important unions
in the country the non-federative structure predominated. Unions in
metal working, railroads, textile and construction, as well as the major
white-collar unions, all have highly centralised structures which con
centrate power in a central leadership elected at a national level. In these
unions of the first degree the control by the central leadership over the
activities of the branches and sections was, in formal terms, nearly
total. In the Asociaciön Obrera Textil, for example, the central
The ‘burocrada sindicaV 167
leadership was empowered by article 53 of its statutes to intervene any
section ‘which practises acts of indiscipline or commits irregularities*.
The internal commissions which led these sections were, moreover, as
article 55 reminded them, ‘merely acting in the character of direct rep
resentatives of the central leadership* and their powers were limited
accordingly.10
It should be borne in mind, too, that although there were also many
federations representing local unions in any one industry, this was in
no way synonymous with real freedom from centralised control. Most
federations have their offices in Buenos Aires and are inevitably domi
nated by the Federal Capital union. The government’s own census of
professional associations conducted in 1965 found, for example, that
38.4% of all unions had their central offices in Buenos Aires. The con
centration of unions of the first degree in the Federal Capital was 42.9%
and of federations, 86.6%.11 In addition many federations had in their
statutes the power to severely discipline member unions and to strongly
limit their independent activity. Thus, for example, article 59 of the
federation of petrol workers* unions laid down that the affiliated unions
were ‘obliged to respect the resolutions adopted by the national secre
tariat and central directive committee of the federation*. Article 60
stated that in no case could the local unions ‘pursue, at a local level,
problems of a general character, nor take up positions which might
compromise the opinion of the federation’.12 Thus the Law of Pro
fessional Associations not only guaranteed the union leaderships’ bar
gaining rights, without fear of competition from rival unions, but it
also laid the basis for a union structure which did much to ensure cen
tralised control within a union. The central union leadership also
derived important elements of control from the use of the disciplinary
clauses contained in all statutes. Most unions have statutes so elastic
that anyone could be found guilty of breaching them at one time or
another. Clauses abound which prohibit the ‘provocation of disorders’,
‘notorious misconduct*, or the even vaguer ‘undecorous behaviour*.
The central committee of a union was usually empowered to judge on
infringements of these clauses, and although there might be an appeal
procedure this, too, was generally controlled by the central leadership.
Article 9 of the metal workers* statutes, for example, empowered the
leadership to expel an affiliate by simple resolution of the central com
mittee, without the necessity to take the decision to any assembly of the
union.
This prevalent type of structure had important implications in terms
of the financial powers accruing to the union leaderships. Union funds
i68 The Vandor era, 1962-6
Table 2. Union income derived from workers, classified by branch o f
economic activity, 7964
E co n o m ic activ ity Total Cuota sindical Cuota asistencial
F ood p ro d u c ts 145,693 90,288 55,405

M a n u f a c tu re textiles 1450*3 126,969 *8,544
B asic m eta ls 410,178 295,300 114,878
M a n u f a c tu rin g ind. 984,795 6 8 7 ,3 1 1 297,484
T o ta l all u n io n s 2,080,072 1,384,461 6 9 5 .6 11
.Source: Censo de Asociaciones Profesionales. Ministem de Trabajo, B uen o s A ires. 1965, C u a d r o 7.
came from a variety of sources. The two most basic sources were the
cuota sindical, basic union dues, and the cuota asistencial, also paid by
the membership and designated for the maintenance of the various
social services offered by the unions. In general these dues were either
set as a percentage of the monthly wage, usually 1%, or at a fixed
monthly rate, usually between 50 and 100 pesos in the mid 1960s.13 In
addition, the employers also paid a certain contribution towards union
social welfare funds, the amount varying from contract to contract.
This aporte empresariaf as it was known, accounted for 40.9% of total
union social welfare funds in 1964.14 Finally there were the extraordi
nary quotas, chief of which was the percentage of every new wage
increase that the union was entitled to retain in the first month follow
ing the signing of a new contract. This retention applied to both union
and non-union members.15 The Law of Professional Associations insti
tuted a system of automatic retention of these different dues at source
by the employer. Given the prevalent type of union structure discussed
above this system endowed a union leadership with great financial
power. In simple terms it meant, for example, that in the major in
dustrial and white-collar unions the membership dues of the metal
worker in Cordoba, the textile worker from Rosario or the railroad
worker from Tucuman, were deducted by their employers and de
posited directly into the respective bank accounts of the central union
in Buenos Aires.
The sums thus placed at the disposal of the union leaderships were
considerable. Table 2 gives an idea in general terms of the quantities
involved in major manufacturing unions.
To these sums originating from the union membership should be
added those arising from the employers* contributions to the union
social welfare funds. This was worth 234 million pesos in 1963 and 464
The 4burocracia sindicaT 1 6 9
Table 3. Social services offered by unions, 1964
L ib ra rie s 194 P en sio n offices 235

C a n te e n s 38 H o sp itals 13
H o lid a y c a m p s 64 W holesale stores 69
S p o rts fields 28 S a n a to ria 122
C o o p e ra tiv e s 6 In s u ra n c e offices 75
U n io n te c h n ica l 274 W orkshops *5
S ch o o ls - O th e rs 127
P h a rm a c ie s 67
Source: Censo de Asociaciones Profesionales. Ministerio de Trabajo, B uenos A ires, 1965, p. 7.
million in 1964.16 A proportion of this income was, of course, invested

in various ways and became part of a union’s permanent assets. Thus,
we find that the total value of assets held by the unions in the industrial
manufacturing sector calculated in 1965 at 592,245 million pesos and
total assets for all unions valued at 4,201,041 millions.17
Such huge sums were in themselves an important explanatory factor
behind the gangsterism and violence that was becoming increasingly as
sociated with Peronist unionism, and also of the personal corruption
which frequently went hand in hand with this. Stories, many of them
well documented, abounded concerning the diversion of these funds to
the private benefit of individual union leaders.18 However, more sig
nificantly, these sums provided the basis for a whole range of social ser
vices offered by the unions to their members and also, given the
concentrated centralism of most union structures, put an immense
source of patronage and pressure at the disposal of the central leaders.
Evidently these two aspects were closely interrelated. An idea of the
extent of these social services on a national level can be gained from
Table 3.
We can better appreciate what these figures meant if we take the case
of a major industrial union such as the Asociaciön Obrera Textil. By
no means the wealthiest of the large unions the AOT was in the year
from May 1965 to May 1966 receiving 198 million pesos from the basic
union dues and over 2 million pesos from the special levy granted them
by the labour contract on the new wage increase. To this had to be
added over 250 million pesos from the cuota asistencial and the employ
ers’ contributions to the social services. The union boasted at this time
of investments of a net value of 154 million pesos.19 The social services
deriving from these funds were considerable. In the Federal Capital the
medical services were centred on the Sanatorio Primera Junta, which
had a capacity to deal with up to a 100,000 families a year, and a central
dental clinic. In the various districts of Gran Buenos Aires there were
seventy clinics of one sort or another; in the twenty-four districts of the
union in the interior of the country there were some sixty-four medical
and dental services. Tourism, too, was catered for. The union in 1966
owned two hotels and holiday camp complexes in Cordoba, and two
in Mar del Plata.20
These sums of money and the services they underwrote had a pro
found effect on the image of union functions propagated by union
leaders and the perceptions of their unions* role held by rank-and-file
members which we will return to later in this section. From the point of
view of the immediate discussion it is also important to emphasise that
they were the bedrock on which negotiations between different factions
of the bureaucracy could take place. They were important not simply
for what they represented in monetary terms, but for what they rep
resented in terms of jobs, influence and prestige. The patronage system
in the unions was built upon a complex pyramid of interlocking
interests both within individual unions and within the movement as a
whole, with the most powerful unions at the apex of the pyramid.
Miguel Gazzera has given a picture of what this could imply for a man
of Vandor*s stature:
They used to buzz around him ceaselessly, waiting for his favours to convert
them into leaders. They were at his disposal because they needed inspectors
from the Ministry who would be partial in their decisions, or they wanted the
UOM printing press to print propaganda for their union elections. O r they
wanted Vandor ‘to persuade* some rival leader of theirs to give way.21
The methods of persuasion could vary. It could imply the physical inti
midation of individuals or, for a particularly recalcitrant union sector, a
delay in the building of a union health clinic or the withdrawal of a
branch’s quota for the union holiday resort in Mar del Plata or Cord
oba.
Even more important as a factor in maintaining union leadership
power was the ability an already ensconced leadership had to control
the election procedure, to head off challenges from an internal oppo
sition. Again the legal basis for this ability was to be found in law
14,455. Reversing the attempts made by the Aramburu government to
implement proportional representation in the leadership of the unions,
the Law of Professional Associations reintroduced the system found
under Perön of the winning list taking all. The list that had a majority
took complete control of the union, even if it had a minority of votes
The 'burocracia sindicaV 171
cast overall. There was no provision - except in exceptional circum
stances in some unions - for minority representation.
Moreover, there was no such thing as electoral competition by indi
viduals for specific posts. Each list consisted of a complete list of candi
dates for all posts, and the members voted for the list in its entirety, not
for individual candidates. This in itself was also conducive to violence
surrounding elections since the list of candidates elected not only took
over the posts contested in the election, but once installed, with no op
position vigilance to worry about, it almost always proceeded to install
its own supporters throughout the administrative apparatus of the
union. This was obviously, an example of the patronage powers men
tioned above, but it also added another dimension to the electoral pro
cess, since in addition to the posts contested in the election, a whole
network of employment opportunities was also at stake.
This system meant that once elected it was extremely difficult to dis
lodge a leadership group, since they were in sole charge of organising
the subsequent elections. Effectively, it was a system ideally suited to
the self-perpetuation of an ensconced union leadership. A number of
ways of ensuring this were available to such a leadership. Most basi
cally, considerable obstacles could be placed in the path of any group
attempting to present their list of candidates. Individual unions had
specific requirements which a list had to fulfil in order to present a list.
A certain number of union members had to formally give their signed
support for a list to be eligible; the exact number of signatures required
varied but wis usually in the range of 10-35% of a union’s total mem
bership. This was in itself a considerable obstacle, not merely because
of the numbers involved but more importantly because, in a growing
atmosphere of leadership intolerance of internal dissent, to put oneself
forward as a sponsor of an opposition list was to run the risk of vic
timisation. Moreover, even if an opposition group did obtain the
required number of signatures these could be questioned by the scrutin
ising committee which was dominated by the leadership. They could
eliminate many of the signatures by simply claiming that they were not
members in good standing with the union. Since being in good standing
was determined by criteria entirely dependent on the existing leader
ship this was a procedure which was very difficult to challenge. There
were, in addition, a number of requirements that a list of candidates had
to fulfil; a certain number of years membership of the union, the prior
exercise of some union function. As the TAMET example demon
strated, candidates of opposition lists were more exposed to victimis
ation than simple supporters. A simple device practised in the TAMET
Table 4. Contested elections as a proportion o f total elections
E lectio n s 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968
W ith sin g le list 55-6 59-7 68.9 76.1 71.4

W ith o p p o sitio n 44.4 40-3 3 >> 23-9 28.6
N o. o f electio n s 111 124 132 176 >75
Source: El proceso politico intemo de los sindicatos en Argentina, J u a n C a rlo s T o rre . D o c u m e n to

d e T ra b a jo , In s titu to T o r c u a to D i T e lia , C IS , 1974, n o . 89.
case was for the management to dismiss opposition leaders before they
had fulfilled the requisite number of years of working in their plant.
The result of this capacity of an entrenched leadership to make the
presentation of opposition lists difficult was the predominance of non-
contested elections in Argentine trade unions. Figures taken from an of
ficial government survey in the mid 1960s indicate this fact very clearly
(see Table 4).
Another vital weapon in the armoury of an existing leadership was
their control of the junta electoral (election commission), since this
controlled the actual running of the elections and the vote counting.
The use of fraudulent procedures, which we noted was becoming more
prevalent in the early 1960s, continued unabated in the following years.
The exact extent is difficult to assess with accuracy but the oppor
tunities were evidently numerous and there were enough proven cases
of disappearing ballot boxes and false voting lists for one to assume that
fraud was common.22 In 1965 the Ministry of Labour suspended the
elections in the textile workers* union for irregularities committed
during the election procedure. In its resolution putting this suspension
into effect the Ministry detailed some of the practices uncovered by its
inspectors:
... considering the adulteration of voting lists in numerous factories suf
ficiently proved ... one of the clearest examples being the Platex company in
Quilmes where, out of some 930 on the electoral register some 139 were not
dues-paying members ...; considering that the electoral register which had
more than 100,000 members was only given to the opposition lists some 24
hours before for them to scrutinise and challenge; that with less than 10 hours
to go before the start of the election procedure the leaders of the Lista Azul y
Celeste and the Lista Blanca did not know the order in which each one of the
different travelling ballot boxes would be taken around the plants ...; that the
electoral commission did not impugn the candidacies of two of the official list
The ‘burocracia sindical* 1 7 3
despite the fact that one of them has not been a textile worker for the required
time and the other although he appears as a worker for the San Marco factory
has never in fact worked there.23
The result of such practices was to make it nearly impossible for an in
ternal opposition, even if it cleared the hurdles surrounding the presen
tation of its list, to displace an existing leadership at elections. One
authority has calculated that of twenty-five unions with more than
25,000 members between 1957 and 1972 there were only two cases
where an official leadership was defeated in elections.24
All of these factors undoubtedly helped give a union leadership a
considerable base of power. It is important, however, to also emphasise
the ambiguity of this power. The source of this ambiguity lay in the role
of the state in labour affairs in Argentina. Evidently, a close relation
ship between state and unions is a common enough phenomena in the
majority of urbanised and industrialised nations. However, in Argen
tina labour law, particularly law 14,455, gave state exceptional
powers vis-à-vis the union movement. Argentine labour law gave a
government potential control of most areas of a union's internal affairs.
A union’s very ability to bargain collectively with employers was de
pendent on its being granted personeria, legal recognition that it was
the sole labour body able to bargain for and represent a certain in
dustrial activity. W ithout personeria the union lost its raison d*être.
Labour law, moreover, laid down stipulations covering every area,
from internal democracy, the running of elections, to keeping adequate
records of where union funds go. The secretary of labour had the power
to oversee the entire election procedure, checking the list of those eli
gible to vote, appointing inspectors to check polling on election day.
He also had great power to check all financial matters - where the funds
went, how they were collected. The law also regulated the frequency of
general assemblies, who was eligible to be a delegate, how much notice
had to be given of the holding of such assemblies.
The precise use made of all this power by the government of the day
varied and was itself the basis of negotiations and bargains between
governments and unions. It could be a subtle, negative use - the turning
of a blind eye, the tolerating of some abuses practised by a union leader
ship whose good favours it suited a government to cultivate at a given
moment. Alternatively, it could be a more positive, direct use - the
harassment of a recalcitrant union whose leaders' actions were perhaps
a political obstacle for a government. Given the wide area that labour
regulations covered, very few unions could claim to adhere to the letter
of the law in all matters and a secretary of labour could usually find a
174 The Vandor era, 1962-6
lapse when pressure needed to be brought to bear on a particular union
leadership. In August 1962, to give an example, a fairly minor breach of
regulations by the textile union, then a leader of union opposition to
the military-imposed Guido government, was used as a pretext for the
government’s withdrawing of the union’s personena. This meant that
for six months the union was unable to start negotiations for a new
wage contract. It also meant that the union received no funds because
the employers, in spite of still having by law to stop union dues from
textile workers* wage packets, did not now have to pass the money on
to the union - since without personena it was not the legally recognised
representative for the textile industry. This hit both the union social
services and basic administration since they were unable to pay pro
fessional staff. In addition, grievances which were normally dealt with
by the Ministry of Labour’s conciliation department now had to go to
the labour section of the justice department, where they could take
many months to be dealt with.25 Ultimately, the Ministry of Labour
had the power to appoint an ‘interventor* - that is to hand over the run
ning of a union to a government-appointed administrator.
The fact that so much of a union’s normal functioning was subject to
such tight potential supervision by the government of the day inevi
tably led to an increased 'politicisation’ of union affairs in Argentina.
This must be understood on two levels. First, it meant that a union
leader had to be interested in the complexion of a national government
- its potential hostility or friendliness to him. The institutional future
of his organisation - the future satisfaction of its needs - were intri
cately bound up with his relations with the state. This in itself was an
important factor behind the ‘integration’ process which we outlined in
a prior chapter; a powerful inducement to the adoption of pragmatic,
‘common sense’ realism by a union leadership, over and above their
own ideological convictions and personal views. Yet, we should be
aware that this did not simply imply union leadership vulnerability. A
government determined to extend its legal supervision of the unions
could find itself confronted by union determination to participate in its
removal from power. In March 1966 the Radical government of Arturo
Illia passed decree 969 modifying the Law of Professional Associations.
The decree represented a wholesale attack on union leadership
powers, enforcing stringent guarantees for internal democracy,
weakening central union financial power by ordering the depositing of
union dues with local branches, and also restricting the use of union fin
ances and facilities for overtly political purposes. Faced with such a
strategic attack on the structure of central union power, rather than the
The ‘hurocracia sindicaT 175
ad hoc use of government power against an individual union which
could be negotiated over as part of some tactical manoeuvring, the
Peronist unions replied in kind. Much of their negotiations with the
military in the latter part of Illia’s government, and the intransigence
toward that government, should be seen in that light.
O n a more personal level, this also meant that the particular person
nel involved in the running of government departments - particularly
the Ministry of Labour - became of some importance for union leaders.
The process of ‘integration* as a national strategy was built upon an
interlocking of personal relationships built up between union leaders
and ministry officials in the post-1958 period. Clearly, this itself was
part of the process of ‘corruption* of previously militant union officials.
More to the point, in a system where the state had such considerable
potential powers over union life it became essential for the union
leaderships to be able to feel that they could trust the ministry bureau
crats with whom they dealt, to be confident that they talked the same
language and shared a common view of the limits of the pressures and
counter-pressures unions and governments could exert on one another.
Continuity of officials was evidently important in building this trust
and, in fact, it was the breaking of the continuity built up in the 1958-63
period when the Radicals under Mia took office that undoubtedly
played an important role in the Peronist union/Radical government
confrontation of 1963-6. The union leaders who had built up personal
relationships and influence with ministry officials, who they knew
shared a common appreciation of the ‘realities* of union life, of the need
to manipulate, control and compromise suddenly found that this per
sonal network was swept away, that their normal ‘connections* and
‘understandings* no longer worked with the same smoothness as
before.
The political role of the Peronist unions, 1962-6

Peronist union leaders did not simply derive power from their ability to
bargain with the collective labour power of their members; they also
derived considerable power from the political role of the unions as the
chief organising force of the Peronist movement as a whole - what one
author has called the ‘juego doble’ of representing the working class in
its struggle for economic demands and representing the Peronist move
ment in its conflicts and manoeuvrings with other political forces in
Argentina.26 The March 1962 elections had posted warning not only of
the dominant role of the unions in the actual organisation of an electoral
campaign but also of their increasingly important role in determining
general Peronist strategy in relation to other social and political forces.
The tensions and conflicts which this role engendered, both within the
Peronist movement and with relation to Perön himself, were to
become increasingly apparent. Indeed, the underlying leitmotif of the
often byzantine political history of the Peronist movement in these
years must be sought on the one hand in the attempt of the Peronist
union leadership around Vandor to confirm their domination of the
whole movement, and to institutionalise this domination in a political
expression acceptable to the other forces in the socio-political set up,
and on the other hand, the determination of Perön to counteract this
implicit challenge to his own position as sole ultimate authority in the
movement.
The lessons drawn by the union leadership centred around Vandor
from the March 1962 elections were boldly stated soon after in an edi
torial of the newspaper Descartes, edited by Miguel Gazzera, and set up
as a voice for the 62 Organisations. The editorial was quite explicit in
affirming the dominant position of the union sector of Peronism:
In the events following the 18 March elections the 62 Organisations have

played the most definitive leading role. Its ethical position and the struggle it
had led for it have clearly shown the role which it plays in the major events of
the country ... it is also public knowledge that it was the coordinating com
mittee of the 62 which decided on going to the polls with candidates of its own.
The results proved without doubt the political vision and leadership capacity of
the men who integrate the committee ... in the face of such evidence General
Perön has decided that the integral leadership of the national movement
should pass to the hands of the union leaders___The facts had already been
pointing in that direction. After September 1955 it was the workers* movement
which adopted the initiatives of struggle against the government ... Augusto
Vandor, helped by Miguel Gazzera, will have the enormous responsibility of
assuming the maximum leadership of the movement. In him will be syn
thesised the domination gained by the union leadership in political matters.27
For the time being, however, this remained more a statement of

intent than a reality, and in September 1962 Perön appointed Raul
Matera as his chief representative in Argentina and head of the Consejo
Coordinador y Supervisor del Peronismo. Matera had no previous
history within the movement, and indeed it would seem that his com
plete lack of any organised personal following within Peronism,
together with Matera’s respectability and contacts with the military,
were precisely the factors which appealed to Perön. Matera was pri
marily charged with negotiating Peronist participation in the presiden-
The ‘hurocracia sindicaT 177
tial elections slated for July 1963. The formula which emerged of a
popular conservative, Solano Lima, and a follower of Frondizi, Syl
vestre Begnis, running on a Frente Nacional y Popular ticket, was sup
ported by the 62 Organisations who prepared to run the campaign in
very much the same way as they had the March 1962 elections. When
the armed forces declared the formula to be unacceptable the 62, with
Perön’s approval, called for a blank vote.
In October 1963 Perön sent orders calling for the complete reorgan
isation of the movement. This reorganisation was to be led by a Junta
Reorganizadora of four - Andrés Framini, Hilda Pineda, Ruben Sosa
and Julio Antun. This was clearly a move against Vandor’s growing
power within the movement. Framini was at this time the most import
ant rival to Vandor for leadership of the union sector, and Pineda and
Sosa were associated with what was known as the Unea Villalôn,
centred on the figure of Hector Villalôn and identified with an insur
rectional position.28 This sector of the Peronist movement consistently
criticised Vandor and the mainstream union leadership for their will
ingness to compromise, and for what was considered to be their overall
plan of integrating Peronism within the status quo. Vandor’s response
was quick in coming; a statement by Sosa criticising Vandor led to the
U O M ’s withdrawal from all the representative bodies of Peronism.
Faced with what was effectively a boycott by the most powerful Peron
ist union Perön retreated and Sosa was removed from the Junta.29
Vandor’s position was further strengthened when a little later Alberto
Iturbe, a close associate of Vandor’s from the political wing of the
movement, was appointed Perön’s personal delegate. The Junta’s
effective demise was confirmed in January 1964 when Perön
announced the creation of a new seven-member commission under
Iturbe’s leadership charged with the task of reorganising Peronism.
This commission, known as the heptunvirato, was clearly Vandorist in
its composition; its members were Juana Matti, Andrés Framini, Carlos
Gallo, Julio Antun, Jorge Alvarez, Miguel Gazzera and Delia Di
Parodi. O f these seven only Framini and Antun were not committed to
Vandor.
In the following six months the commission’s task was to organise an
inscription campaign which would culminate in the election of dele
gates to a founding congress of a new Justicialist Party, which Perön
had determined would be the sole representative of Peronism. Vandor,
through his control of the 62 Organisations and the UOM apparatus,
effectively dominated this process. The inscription campaign was,
numerically, not a success, some 33,000 members registering in the
i 78 The Vandor era> 1962-6
Federal Capital, and some 170,000 in the province of Buenos Aires.
This, however, made it all the easier for Vandor to control the election
of convention delegates which took place in June 1964. The election
was a contest between candidates loyal to Vandor and those following
Framings lead. Vandor’s organisational superiority gave him a clear
victory. The majority of delegates were from the 62 Organisations; in
the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires some 60—65% of delegates were
Vandorist, and in the province some 55%.30 The party authorities elec
ted from the convention duly reflected this balance of power.
The future strategy to be followed by the new union-dominated
party was clear. The immediate objective was participation in the mid
term elections due in March 1965. Indeed, the internal election pro
cedure had been carefully carried out in accordance with the existing
statute of political parties, to show, as one union leader put it, ‘that we
follow the rules of the game*.31 This electoral orientation was re
inforced by the apparent failure of the CGT to follow up the factory
occupations of June with other actions directed against the govern
ment. Similarly, the failure in December of the much heralded Openi-
cion Retomoy which had been built up as laying the groundwork for
Perön’s return to Argentina, confirmed the growing consensus feeling
that the only viable strategy for Peronism lay along the road of electoral
gains. The only open question was under which institutional banner
Peronism would fight the elections.
The question of political strategy clearly involved the neo-Peronist
parties. They had disobeyed Peron’s order to blank vote in July 1963
and they had achieved some success, gaining two governorships and
several national deputies. This led to considerable friction with the
union sector, which regarded them as a threat to their attempt to act as
the political arbiters of Peronism. The neo-Peronists offered the
government an alternative channel with which to bargain politically
with Peronism. The decision to reconstitute the Justicialist Party in
early 1964 did much to weaken the position of the neo-Peronists which
depended on their ability to present themselves to the authorities as the
only legally constituted, moderate political body of Peronism. The
union leadership hoped that with the legal recognition of the Justicialist
Party they would be spared the need to bargain with the neo-Peronists
for the use of their party labels. The latter in turn did not respond to
Peron’s instructions to integrate themselves into the new party struc
tures, arguing instead that the movement should be organised into a
federation of different groupings.
When in January 1965 the electoral judge refused to grant the Justi-
The ‘burocraria sindicaT 179
cialist Party legal standing, some compromise became inevitable. It was
agreed that Peronism would use the Union Popular in the Federal
Capital, Buenos Aires province, Chaco and San Juan, and a range of
other neo-Peronist parties in the other provinces. There was no doubt,
however, that the Justicialist Party would dominate selection of candi
dates, especially in Buenos Aires. Assemblies were held in the different
sections of the party; each section was to put forward three candidates -
one from the union wing, one from the women’s sector and a third
from the political. In Buenos Aires these were then to be scrutinised by
a commission, controlled by Vandor’s union people, where the order
of the candidates was to be decided. In this process opponents were
weeded out and the prime positions on the lists given to the women
supporters of Delia Di Parodi, and the political and union allies of
Vandor. The first position on the list of candidates for deputy in the
Federal Capital and Buenos Aires went to Paulino Niembro and Geron-
imo Izzetta, both union confidants of Vandor.
The election of 14 March 1965 represented a considerable victory for
Peronism, and above all for the union sector centred on Vandor. In the
national Chamber of Deputies there now existed a Peronist block of
fifty-two deputies, compared with the Radical Party’s seventy. In the
provincial assemblies there were more than 150 Peronists elected. In
total the official Peronist lists received 3,032,106 votes, compared with
some 318,197 for the neo-Peronists.32 Paulino Niembro became the
head of the Peronist block in congress, symbolising union power and
domination of the movement. This was confirmed in April with the cre
ation of a new body to lead Peronism. It was known as the Mesa Anali-
tica and consisted of the five grandes - Framini, Vandor, Iturbe, Di
Parodi and Lascano - three representatives of the 62 and two from the
CG T.33 The task of the new body was to determine the priority projects
to be presented to congress by the Peronist block and to act as a general
coordinator of the block’s activity. The political task of the movement
under its leadership was to consolidate the voting base gained in March
and prepare for the 1967 elections, and beyond that for the 1969 presi
dential elections.
Peron’s response to what was clearly intended to be the institutional
confirmation of the union leadership’s domination of the movement
was not slow in coming. While he had consented to the electoral strat
egy, he could not remain indifferent to the implications of the post
election situation in terms of the balance of forces within Peronism and
his own position of authority. In July 1965, he sent instructions calling
for the creation of a broad based body of nineteen, which was to
i 8 o The Vandor era, 1962-6
include the existing leadership together with delegates from the neo-
Peronists and the youth sectors. The aim of this move was to dilute the
power of the five grandes and their allies who effectively controlled the
Mesa Analitica. The Vandorists tried to convince Perön of the folly of
such a move but he remained adamant. At the beginning of September
they therefore wound up the Mesa and announced the formation of a
new, and broader, body called the Junta Coordinadora Nacional. This
opening up was, however, more apparent than real. The new body con
sisted of representatives from the neo-Peronists, the congressional
block, the 62 and the Justicialist Party, in addition to the five grandes.
Thus although the leadership group had been formally expanded it still
remained very much tied to, and dominated by, the Vandorist leader
ship.34
The implicit refusal of the union leaders around Vandor to dilute
their power within a broadened national body inaugurated a six-month
period of overt struggle between this leadership and Perön and his
more loyal followers in Argentina. Whilst the language of the dispute re
mained the typically opaque idiom of internal Peronist discourse - with
both sides at various times swearing ultimate allegiance to Perön - the
issues in contention were clear enough beneath the rhetorical surface.
Peron’s response to the challenge of the union leadership was to send
his wife, Isabel, to Argentina with instructions to reorganise the move
ment. On her arrival she initiated discussions with various political and
military figures and began to draw together the anti-Vandorist forces
within Peronism. Her presence enabled the Vandorists to phrase their
disagreements with Perön in terms of criticisms of his representatives
in Argentina - they were, thus, ostensibly criticising the king’s advisers
rather than the king. Yet the real challenge to Perön himself was
apparent. N or was it merely a question of Peron’s personal position.
Intricately bound up with this was the question of the legal institution
alisation of the movement. The fundamental concern of the Vandorist
leadership on these issues was made clear at a special conference of the
61 Organisations held in Avellaneda on 22 October 1965. At this con
ference of 100 representatives loyal to Vandor a motion was carried
repudiating ‘the pacts between those who invoke a non-existent repres
en tativity in the movement, and the spokesman of the government’.35
While this was, on the surface, an attack on Isabel’s representatives who
were busy speaking with various official government and military
spokesmen, it was more fundamentally questioning the authority of
Perön himself to carry on negotiations in the name of the movement,
over and above the locally elected authorities. The Avellaneda con-
The ‘hurocracia sindicaT 1 8 1
ference reaffirmed ‘its will to promote the immediate institutionalisa

tion of the movement’, which would take the form of a legal political
party organised ‘from the bottom upward in a clean, internally demo
cratic process’.36 Clearly, Peron’s role in a party whose leaders were
elected at national conventions would be limited, since crucial political
decisions, such as negotiating the terms of Peronist participation in the
1967 elections, would inevitably pass out of his hands.
The dispute split Peronism from top to bottom. In the union field
José Alonso and a group of other union leaders challenged Vandor’s
right to speak in the name of the 62 Organisations, and after their
expulsion for this dissent they formed a rival body the 62 Organisa
tions de pie junto a Perôn. In early 1966 they held the founding con
ference in Tucuman and gathered together a wide range of union
figures, particularly from the interior of the country and from those
hardliners who had been marginalised by Vandor since 1962.37 Vandor
kept his control of the base of the 62, and with communist and some
independent support he displaced Alonso from the head of the CGT.
He then reconvened a national congress of the CGT and elected a new
secretariat headed by a Vandorist, Francisco Pérez, of the power
workers’ union.
In the political sphere Perön sent orders in late 1965 demanding the
dissolution of the Junta Coordinadora Nacional and the submission of
the Vandorists to a newly created Comando Delegado Nacional. While
they could not refuse to disband the Junta, the Vandorists prevaricated
when it came to joining a new body whose composition would be de
termined by Isabel Perön. They also managed to keep control of most
of the official apparatus of the Justicialist Party. The crucial test of
strength between the two sides came in a by-election for deputy in
Mendoza, in April 1966. The Justicialist Party’s candidate was Alberto
Seru Garcia; Perön countered by naming an alternative candidate,
Enrique Corvalan Nanclares. The Vandorist leadership of the party
argued that whoever had been democratically elected by the local party
would by law have to be the candidate. The symbolism of this assertion
was obvious; on the one hand Vandor was asserting the right of the
local leadership to determine their own political decisions, and on the
other Perön was insisting on his right to dictate such decisions. The
result of the contested election between the two Peronists was a clear
victory for Corvalan Nanclares, and ultimately Perön. From this time
until the coup of June 1966 which overthrew Illia, Vandor largely con
centrated on consolidating his union base and undermining the pos
ition of the rival 62 Organisations.
i 8 2 The Vandor era, 1962-6
Advantages and disadvantages of playing politics

Their role as political leaders was a role which could turn union leaders
into national figures, courted by other social and political forces and
with powers beyond those of traditional union leaders. Yet, as the pre
ceding account makes clear, we are, once more, faced with issues of
ambiguity. The power the Peronist leadership derived from their pQÜti-
cal role was not an unqualified one.
There were several ways in which their political role could be advan
tageous. The very fact that they were the ones on the ground in Argen
tina charged with the day-to-day negotiation and running of the
movement, the distribution of Peron’s political patronage, and with a
base of power in the unions relatively free from his direct control,
helped to enhance the union leadership’s authority. Moreover, their
ability to mobilise the working class in the name of Perön was an im
portant weapon to be used to pressure a government for concrete econ
omic gains. O ut of the sustained mobilisation of the Semana de
Protesta of 1963, the Plan de Lucha of 1964, and the mobilisation
during the state visit of General De Gaulle in 1965, concrete conces
sions such as the minimum wage law were obtained from the Radical
government.38 The entire operation mounted by the Peronist unions
for the return of Perön at the end of 1964 can also be partly seen as a
way of maintaining the pressure of the Plan de Luchay with the more
concrete political demand for Peron’s return of relatively secondary
importance.
Being the principal political representatives of Perön vis-à-vis the
Peronist rank and file gave union leaders a certain added authority, and
a basic reservoir of support that failure in the economic field might
otherwise have denied them. Every visit to Madrid or letter from
Perön could be used to offset a strike lost or a bad contract signed. This
could evidently be regarded as no more than a specific Argentine twist
to a common practice of union leaderships - the ‘selling’ of collective
agreements and leadership decisions. Their political role could be said
to have helped the union leaders to maintain what one author has
described as the ‘illusion of achievement*.39 This was not a simple, one
way process. If their political authority buttressed their union pos
itions it could also be argued that their ability to mobilise their unions
on ostensibly bread-and-butter issues was also used by union leaders as
a weapon in their political manoeuvrings. Thus, it is clear that while the
factory occupations of 1964 responded to a genuine demand for econ-
The ‘burocracia sindicaT 1 8 3
omic and social gains, they also had a political dimension. The Plan de
Lucha was intended to be a demonstration to the military of both the
weakness of Illia’s government, and the corresponding power of the
unions. The armed forces would thus be persuaded either to come to
terms with the union leadership in the event of any coup they might be
planning against the Radical government, or to modify objections they
had concerning Peronist electoral participation, on the grounds that
absorbtion in the election process would diffuse the militant social
power displayed by the factory occupations.40
In general, though, political mobilisation could give an embattled
working class hope and a realisable substitute for victories in the econ
omic arena. In the generally uncomfortable economic climate in this
period, union leaders often emphasised the difficulty of making gains in
the purely collective bargaining field and directed their members’ atten
tion to the need to seek a solution to their problems in the wider field of
political action. They spoke to them as both union and political leaders,
and the latter undoubtedly helped to bolster the former. In the situ
ation of general political proscription of Peronism after 1955, and the
parallel recreation of a strong union movement, the political identity of
the Peronist working class increasingly became incarnated in its trade
unions, and this was a powerful factor in enabling union leaderships to
maintain their strength in what were otherwise, on many occasions,
highly unfavourable situations.
Yet, it is also evident that this union political power had its limits.
First, because in an institutional framework dominated by the Perön/
anti-Perôn dichotomy, there was always a limit as to how far unions
could push the bargaining threat of Peronist mobilisation, participation
in elections and the like, before the armed forces stepped in, doing
away, albeit temporarily, with the process of threat and counter-threat.
The Frondizi experience illustrated very well the limits and dangers of
the political game from the unions’ point of view. For four years Fron
dizi used the threat that if the unions pressed too hard, struck too often,
or participated in elections there would be a coup against his govern
ment, which would lead to a far tougher anti-union regime. The threat,
naturally enough, worked both ways, and much of the modus vivendi
between Frondizi and Peronist unions was premised on a recognition of
this fact. The Peronist participation in the March 1962 elections had
shown that Frondizi had been correct, since the Guido government was
far less amenable to union pressure. Similarly, the Peronist gains at the
1965 elections, orchestrated by the union sector, and their likely sue-
1 8 4
The Vandor eray 1962-6
cess in 1967, were important calculations in the minds of those who car
ried out the June 1966 coup. It was, in short, a ‘juego impossible,*
which the Peronist unions could not win owing to the very fact that
they were Peron’s chief political expression.41
It is also important to realise that their power of bargaining politi
cally came more from their position as Peron’s political representatives
before the masses than from the independent bargaining power they
derived from the union field, and was, ultimately at least, dependent on
the prestige of Peron’s name. This was clearly a source of strength, but
it was also a source of a fundamental weakness since their chief political
bargaining weapon was, in the last resort, not theirs to control. The use
of the camiseta did give them considerable room for manoeuvre and
some independence in their relations with Perön and with govern
ments, but it was not the equivalent of bargaining politically from a
position of entirely autonomous union strength.
Perön did allow the union leadership very considerable freedom of
action in their role as his political representatives, and very rarely inter
fered in their specifically union dealings. Partly, this reluctance to
interfere was due to realism on his part. From his exile in Madrid he
could not hope to control the daily details concerning the movement in
Argentina. As he put it in an interview: T like to act a little like the eter
nal father, with the blessing “ urbi et orbi**, but letting providence do its
work, without appearing too much. I think that the force of the Eternal
Father is that he does not appear too much. If we saw God every day we
would end up losing our respect for him, and moreover, we wouldn’t
be short of some fool who wanted to replace him.*42
Perön was, moreover, aware of the power of a union leadership, its
capacity to control the union machinery, and the potential dangers of
weakening what was from his point of view the ‘vertebral column* of
the movement. The prolonged clash with Vandor in late 1965 and early
1966 was evidence of the risks involved in challenging a firmly
entrenched leader like Vandor, and the damage done to the movement
in general by such a challenge. The problems implied in such a conflict
were delicate. As Perön explained to a correspondent who had
questioned his failure to curb Vandor*s independence earlier:
If the UOM, as a Peronist organisation, names its secretary general we can do
nothing else but accept it, especially when it is the case of Vandor who has
always been a Peronist. To do otherwise would imply the expulsion of the
union from the Peronist movement, which would be inconceivable because the
metal workers are all Peronists. As you can see, the problem from the point of
view of the leadership of the movement is not as simple as it seems.43
The ‘burocracia sindicaT i*5
Perön was, moreover, generally very cautious about siding with one
wing or another of the movement. This reflected both a pragmatic re
alism and also a recognition on his part of the contradictory amalgam of
forces which went to make up Peronism and which he considered to be
one of the movement’s strengths. He preferred to act as a final arbiter of
conflict, and direct intervention on one side or another was a last resort.
It remained true, however, that while possession of the camiseta did
give the union hierarchy considerable room for manoeuvre, and a
reasonable degree of independence in their relations with Perön and
with governments, this was not the same as operating from a position of
autonomous union strength. Vandor’s reported remark that ‘if I aban
doned the camiseta I would lose the union in a week* is a realistic recog
nition of this fact.44 When the union leaders’ independence became too
great and they started to use their powers in ways Perön disapproved
of, he could remind them of the relative nature of that power. Perön
and the union leaders were, thus, caught in something of a vicious
circle. Perön was, given the nature of the post-195 5 situation, bound
to rely primarily on the unions as his principal means of bargaining and
of asserting Peronist claims within the political system. However, the
success which the unions achieved in this role, the confidence which
they derived from it and the boost it gave to their organisational base,
inevitably posed an implicit challenge to Peron’s own capacity to
determine the movement’s ultimate fate.
One of the results of this situation was the frequent phenomenon of
Perön being forced by circumstances to use and promote the union or
ganisation of the movement and then, as this seemed about to reach
some formalised expression, of his deliberately turning against it and
provoking its demise. It often seemed as though the very success of the
unions in developing their role as Peron’s chief political representatives
condemned them to ultimate failure in this sphere. Hence, too, we find
the organisational chaos and eclecticism of Peronism. It was to remain,
particularly after Vandor’s failure to give it some coherent, union-
based institutionalised form, essentially a loose federation of different
groups loyal to Perön. This, indeed, seems to have been his intention.
For all his reiterated statements concerning the need to organise the
movement, organisation on the only terms really conceivable, that is
based on and dominated by the unions, was precisely what he most
feared. He seems, if one ignores his formal rhetoric, to have conceived
of the movement ideally in terms of a semi-formalised, almost colloidal
state, capable of constantly challenging the status quo, of preventing a
peaceful institutionalisation which would have excluded Peronism, of
evolving a concrete organisational expression for this or that tactical

necessity, but never achieving anything permanent. This underlying
notion seems to have been present since the immediate post-19$$ era.
For all the paraphernalia of organisational terms to be found in the
documents of the time, Perön’s own conception of the forms the pol
itical struggle of the movement would take comes across as curiously
semi-anarchic in nature. In the correspondence with Cooke we con
stantly find Perön referring to the myriads of different actions by dif
ferent groups, each indulging in the ‘revolutionary gymnastics’ which
would in some almost metaphysical way undermine the will of the
‘tyranny* to continue governing, and, unified only by a common loy
alty to him, achieve the longed for ‘national insurrection’. The organis
ational forms that this process might take were left imprecise. The
implications for the union leadership of this attitude were made abun
dantly clear with the defeat of the Vandorist candidate in the Mendoza
elections. Any plans Vandor might have had to create a union-based
party with Perön as a simple figurehead had to be definitively aban
doned after this débâcle.
8
Ideology and politics in
Peronist unions: different currents
within the movement
While Peronism does not-structure itself on the lines of a revolutionary

party, i.e. with a revolutionary politics understood as the unity of
theory, action and organisational method, it will continue to be subject
to spontaneism, to the juxtaposition of tactics that are not integrated into
a strategy, into deadends that successive bureaucrats lead it into; leaders
who can conceive of no other solution save electoral fronts or army
coups. Yet, both golpism o and electoral fronts imply renouncing the
seizure of power.
John William Cooke
The common basis

We have already analysed in a previous part of this work the process by
which crucial notions of formal Peronist ideology had survived in the
post-195 5 period. We have stressed the potentially antagonistic coexist
ence of these tenets with notions and values which emerged from the
class conflict and bitterness of the 1955-60 experience of the Peronist
working class and, in particular, an important stratum of militants. As
the tide turned against this militant experience something like an
agreed-upon set of assumptions coalesced around the mainstream
Peronist union movement. The notions which informed this ideologi
cal and programmatic agenda attenuated many of the ideological ten
sions and conflicts of the earlier period and went a considerable way to
establishing a consensus between rival factions of the movement.
Indeed, Vandorist hegemony within the Peronist union movement was
based largely on its ability to articulate this consensus. The heirs to the
more radical potentialities which had been present during the Resist
ance were to be increasingly restricted to marginal sectors of the
workers* movement, and even they, as we shall see, would not deny
many of the basic, formal notions of this Peronist orthodoxy.
A document issued by the 62 Organisations in August 1963 admir
ably summarised the main economic and social elements common to
1 8 7
the variety of programmes and statements issuing from the Peronist
union movement in the mid 1960s. The economic demands included: a
policy of full employment and high consumption; control over costs,
fixing of maximum prices and limits on profits; the stimulating of pri
vate activity of national capital; the nationalisation of bank deposits and
the severing of ties with the IMF ; the application of monetary and
credit policies specifically aimed at stimulating production and reacti
vating the economy; rigorous exchange controls to eliminate the
import of unnecessary goods, or ones which would compete with
Argentine industry. In addition the document called for: a foreign com
merce policy which would ensure the necessary state intervention to
diversify exports; the cancellation of all petrol contracts with foreign
companies; an agrarian reform which would eliminate the latifundios;
the nationalisation of transport, all means of communication, basic
industries and all others which ‘might make possible the formation of
monopolies*; the denouncing of all agreements which grant privileges
to foreign capital and the instituting of controls on the repatriation of
profits. In addition, economic priority was given to social investment
in housing, education and the socialisation of medical treatment. These
economic demands were conceived as forming part of ‘an economic and
social policy which will bring about the structural changes necessary to
give the country back its economic independence, political sovereignty
and social justice’.1
The ideological presuppositions informing these economic policy
demands were clear. First, the underlying context in which these econ
omic demands were to be met was not specifically anti-capitalist. There
was, in fact, in the various programmes put forward by Peronist union
ism in these years a consistent preoccupation with the encouragement
of private industrial development; as witness the demands made in the
programme of the 62 Organisations which we have quoted from above.
There were, however, two important caveats. This industry was to be
owned by national, Argentine capital. Point eleven of the 62’s pro
gramme stated ‘we must stimulate private national capital so as to
achieve and consolidate a native capital which permits the development
of all the internal possibilities which will enable us to free ourselves in
the shortest possible time from the collaboration of foreign capital’.2
Secondly, this industry must be subject to the limitations imposed by
the national good. It must recognise its social responsibilities to other
sectors of the national community. Thus, for example, the fixing of
maximum prices and the control of profits was premised on the reason
ing that ‘in this way private activities will not become monopolies, nor
Ideology and politics in Peronist unions 1 8 9
will profits exceed the demands of the common good and the interest of
the population and the country*.3 Similarly, nationalisation was con
ceived as being ‘a means to ensure that private capital takes into account
the general interests of the nation and advances the welfare of the
people*.4 These tw in ideological assumptions can clearly be traced back
to the state-generated rhetoric of the Peronist era. They were present
also in the p o st- 195 5 era and underlay, as we have shown, the search
for, and belief in, a strategy of ‘genuine* economic development over
seen by the state.
The social philosophy implied in these economic demands was also
clear. Fundamentally, the Peronist union movement clung to a formal
commitment to a belief that the economic policies necessary to effect a
change in structures within the Argentine economy could be implemented
within a context of class consensus. They consistently emphasised their
opposition to the notion of class conflict. On a general level this belief
was reflected in a search for class allies with whom to form a multi
class alliance which would form the political basis for the implementation
of the economic strategy we have outlined. One clear expression
of this in the mid 1960s was the search for common ground with employers*
organisations, in particular the Confederaciön General Economica.
The CGE grouped together the smaller industrialists - often based in
the interior - largely based on national capital and dependent on the in
ternal market. While there were frequent discussions between the CGE
and the unions, it was primarily at particular crisis points in the econ
omic cycle that contacts were closest. At the depth of the depression of
1962-3 the CGE found itself sharing the unions* preoccupation over
the need to reactivate the economy. Serving the internal market, and
having grown up largely under tariff protection, they were bound to be
sympathetic to union calls for increased consuming power, extended
credit facilities and discriminating tariffs, as well as sharing the general
union concern with the effect of monopolies and foreign capital on
Argentine industry.5 In a similar vein the CGT went out of its way to
involve other social sectors in the various stages of the Plan de Lucha
against Illia's government. In the build up to the general strike of 31
May - the Semana de Protesta - there were scheduled discussions held
with employers* organisations, other professional associations and a
general meeting of political parties. Moreover, one of the principal slo
gans of the CG T called on the employers ‘to accompany your workers
in action against the parasites of the country*.6 Only those parasitic sec
tors most closely tied to foreign capital and the native ‘oligarchy* were
considered to be beyond the scope of this sought-after consensus.
More specifically, the emphasis on class consensus was transferred to
the realm of the capitalist enterprise itself. If the nation was conceived
of as a community of interests which were, ultimately, non-
antagonistic, so too was the individual company. While they remained
formally committed to a belief in the benefits of private capital, these
had to be limited by the common good both through the mediation of
the state, and by means of a change in the nature and concept of the
firm. In 1965 the CGT produced a document which explicitly spelt out
what this implied: ‘It was traditional, liberal capitalism which created
the myth that the company is exclusively the property of capital. . . it
is necessary to recognise legally that the company is a unity of produc
tion, that is to say a community of people associated together for a
common purpose, and whose fruits are the property of both capital and
labour.*7 This recognition of the social function of capital was to be
expressed in practical terms in the introduction of worker participation
- cogestion. In all the major policy statements of these years, from all
the different tendencies within Peronist unionism, cogestion appeared
as a prominent demand. The 1963 document of the 62 Organisations
had given great emphasis to this demand. The union leadership empha
sised, however, the non-conflictual nature of this coparticipation. Pau
lino Niembro, the leader of the Peronist block in congress and a
prominent leader of the metal workers, replied when asked by a
journalist how he reconciled the social function of property with free
enterprise:
... it is necessary to erase the image of the owner of the factory as the boss.
The owner is a leader in the same way that union men are leaders; the company
is a common good which must be at the service of society. C ogestion is there
fore necessary to avoid the excessive appropriation of profits. This does not
signify, however, that the employers lose control of their company.8
This emphasis on the enterprise as a community of interests was con

tinually reiterated as a rationale behind the actions of the Peronist
unions. Even those actions which most directly challenged both the
state and employers were justified on the basis of this essentially non-
conflictual rationale. Thus in mid 1962 at the depth of the recession,
when there was a wave of factory occupations in the metal-working
industry to protest the factory closures and lay offs, and the UOM
leadership had itself disposed that the occupied plants should continue
to function with the layed-off workers operating their machines, it was
nonetheless careful to emphasise that in doing this: 'The metal workers
are not attempting extremist or collectivist solutions as some claim, but
rather they are defending something which they consider their own: the
enterprise as a community of interests.’9 In a similar fashion the CGT
went out of its way to reassure the public that the mass factory occu
pations of 1964 were not intended to initiate their expropriation from
their rightful owners, but merely to demonstrate that ‘while factories
are the property of their owners they also belong to the country and,
therefore, to the workers since they must fulfill a social function’.10
Another crucial element in formal Peronist union ideology was the
assumption - common both to leaders and rank and file - that the role
of the union went beyond the basic process of wage bargaining. This
broadened notion of the function of trade unionism was an important
feature which underlay much of the internal debate within Peronism
and between Peronist unions and the state authorities. In the post-19 55
era the Peronist union leaders deliberately fostered an image of the
extensive functions of unions based on their previous experience under
Perön, and it was an image which found a ready response among their
members. What precisely did these ‘extensive functions’ imply? In gen
eral in the 1962-6 period we can see the development of two different
trends of thought, two different emphases within Peronist unionism
concerning this issue.
O n the one hand, there was a clear tendency in these years to place
increasing emphasis on the social function, of unions, over and above
their wage-bargaining role. With the growth of the financial resources
of the unions after the upheaval of the 1955-60 period, and the sub
sequent expansion of social services which we outlined in the preceding
chapter, union leaders frequently fostered an image of their unions as
fundamentally service organisations providing a whole range of social
services to their members. The year books and almanacs of the leading
unions were more and more concerned with the details of their medical
facilities with graphs displaying the wonders of the orthodontic ser
vices; fillings and extractions performed seemed to become a measure
of union achievement. N or, indeed, should the attraction of this be be
littled; in the absence of anything resembling effective state social ser
vices the services provided by the unions - ranging from medical
treatment to subsidised prescriptions to, in some cases, union-built
housing estates - were an issue of no little importance to the union
member.
Hand in hand with this there existed a tendency to use business cri
teria for measuring union effectiveness. Juan José Taccone, a leader of
the light and power workers* union, in a speech of January 1966 cele
brating the union’s founding, contrasted its weakness in 1944 with its
1 9 2 The Vandor era,1962-6
strength twenty-two years later: ‘Today on the other hand we have an
organisation with a real capital value of more than $1500 million, an
annual economic turnover of more than $2000 million, a collective con
tract, participation with management . . . sports grounds, hotels,
apartments.*11 A few years earlier Pedro Gomis, the leader of the state
petroleum workers, had bluntly declared in an interview: ‘We share the
modern conception that an organisation’s worth should be measured in
terms of its economic cpacity.’12 Both the light and power union and
the petrol workers* union operated in privileged state-run sectors of the
economy, and the majority of unions could not hope to emulate their
achievement in terms of the services provided, yet it is still true that the
emphasis on such an image of a union’s function was increasingly
common among all unions at this time, both Peronist and non-
Peronist.
The other principal trend of thought referred to above was specifi
cally associated with the Peronist unions: namely the definition of the
goals and functions of unions in the broadest political and social terms.
Andrés Framini gave a clear definition of this fundamental ideological
conviction in his speech to the eighth national congress of the textile
workers’ union in December 1961:
The union must also serve for other things of great importance which involve
action far beyond the daily struggle that we carry on within trade unionism ...
we have to convince ourselves once and for all that we will not be able to help
ourselves even as textile workers if we don’t aim much higher, because if we
don’t we won’t even achieve our limited, immediate goals.13
It is true that in modern, industrial societies unions have as a matter

of course tended to take an interest in a far wider range of issues than
wage bargaining and working conditions; they have also routinely let
their views be known on general economic and social issues, and have
tried to influence the overall context within which wages and con
ditions are bargained over. This has especially been the case where the
economic situation has been unfavourable for routine union bargain
ing. It is also true that, as we have seen, the specifically political role of
Peronist unions could be used for non-political ends, namely to enable
a union leadership to ‘sell’ agreements to their members. It could,
therefore be argued that there was little specifically ‘ideological’ about
the Peronist unions’ insistence on a broadened union role. Statements
concerning the need for unions to look beyond immediate economic
demands were a natural development in a complex industrial society,
and part and parcel of any union leader’s rhetorical baggage. In this
Ideology and politics in Peronist unions 193
context, therefore, it could be argued that we should not attach too
much ideological weight to what were essentially functional develop
ments. Yet, it seems clear that what distinguishes the Peronist case was
the insistence with which the political role of unions was emphasised;
the conscious denial of the validity of a purely ‘business unionism* con
ception.14 When the weekly information bulletin of the CGT could
claim in 1964 that ‘it is incontrovertible that the principal objective of a
union organisation is the changing of the political, economic and social
structure’, then it is clear that more was being claimed than a simple
right to let their opinions be known concerning general questions of
national policy.15
Certainly, both the non-Peronist unions and the anti-Peronist auth
orities were aware of the extensive nature of Peronist claims on this
issue. The rock on which Peronist/non-Peronist union unity always
foundered in these years was precisely the Independents* rejection of
the Peronists’ grander political and social claims. Thus, for example,
the independents refused to continue with the Plan de Lucha after Illia
had conceded many of the initial economic demands of the CGT. The
Peronist claim that the Plan's fundamental aim was to pressure for a
more profound social and political restructuring was not, in their eyes,
legitimate. Similarly, there existed a constant polemic after 1955 be
tween Peronist unions and the state on this issue. Every minister of
labour or of the economy in the post-195 5 governments had considered
it necessary to argue that the unions must limit themselves to the non
political field. The Peronist press, on the other hand, frequently took
up the theme to reject it. The culmination of the polemic, in legal terms
at least, arrived with the Radical government’s decree 969 regulating
the Law of Professional Associations. Article 2 of the decree prohibited
‘all acts of proselytism or ideological propaganda* on the part of the
unions. The Peronist response to this was to argue that their interest in
the wider political and ideological issues was not a narrow party-
political one. They were, they claimed, reflecting the legitimate con
cern of Argentine workers for a more just society and a sovereign
nation, a concern which found its ideological and political expression in
their adherence to Peronism, and its chief institutional voice, the
Peronist unions.
Despite the general ideological consensus which existed within main
stream, and even dissident, Peronist unionism the union movement
was not a homogeneous body acting in unison in an agreed response to
a commonly held set of ideological tenets. Within mainstream Peronist
unions there was still a divergence of opinions concerning the different
ways of achieving their general ideological aspirations. The issue of
exactly which political tactics and forms were most appropriate
remained hotly contested and resolved itself primarily into the question
of how the unions should interpret the political function they claimed
for themselves both vis-a-vis the state, other social forces and, indeed,
within the Peronist movement itself.
The Vandorist project

Augusto Vandor, as leader of the metal workers* union and the domi
nant figure within the Peronist union apparatus, evoked extreme reac
tions within Peronism, ranging from hagiography at one pole to
demonology at the other.16 The images associated with these diverse
approaches are correspondingly diverse, with the martyred leader of
the one countered by the organiser of union corruption and gang
sterism of the other. In these circumstances it is very difficult to find a
way through the competing images and arrive at something approach
ing an objective judgement of the aims of Vandorism.
In part this difficulty is simply a reflection of the fact that Vandor
ism, as a current within Peronism, was not clearly definable as a
coherent doctrinal and theoretical movement, easily distinguishable
from other currents. Partly, too, it is a reflection of the essential prag
matism of most union leaders. Vandor was a master of the realpolitik of
Argentine politics and of the methods necessary to control a union
movement. He was, in this sense, the archetypal union boss, confident
of his power to negotiate with politicians, army leaders and employers,
and doctrinal principles were of secondary importance in the everyday
turmoil of union affairs. Miguel Gazzera, an intimate collaborator, has
given us an astute description of Vandor. He was not, says Gazzera, ‘a
leader of the barricades and even less a revolutionary leader ... all his
acts had their roots in a solid pragmatism and intuition*.17 Gazzera goes
on to say that: ‘Vandor was interested more in the details thrown up by
a given opportunity than by the questions of overall strategy . .. he
never tried to talk about profundities of which he was ignorant, and if
anyone tried to do this his firm and practical reply dissuaded them with
his lack of interest.*18
This pragmatism and lack of interest in ideological discussions car
ried with it implicit problems for the researcher. The milieu Vandor op
erated in was that of the personal understanding, the deal sealed with a
scotch in the ministry, or an arrangement worked out in a local boliche.
By definition, this meant that there were very few neat summaries of
ideological positions, nor even expressions of tactical reasoning behind

specific actions. There are, certainly, no policy documents revealing
Vandor* s innermost thoughts which might form the convenient basis
for some explanatory framework concerning his overall aims. In these
circumstances it is tempting to agree with Amado Olmos,
the hospital and sanitation workers’ leader, a long-time intimate
of Vandor’s who was considered by many to be the éminence grise
behind Vandorism in its heyday, when he said: ‘Vandorism suffers from
a breach which it is impossible to close up: its lack of ideology. Thus
Vandor acts on the basis of adventurism, of political opportunism.*19
To accept such an evaluation at face value would, however, be excess
ive. First, because pragmatism and opportunism are themselves ideo
logical; the conscious denial of ideology is itself part of the
common-sense philosophy so beloved of pragmatists, whether union
leaders or not. Second, because there are some statements of intent and
principle by Vandor and certainly many more by his more loquacious
followers. The little written evidence we do have suggests that his per
sonal views were eminently unexceptionable; they precisely match the
ideological presuppositions we have recently outlined.20 From the
point of view of the concrete political implications of this position for
the Peronist unions we are dependent upon the evidence of actual trade
union practice, and the rationalisations provided for this practice by
some of the chief unions enrolled in the Vandorist current.
Viewing this evidence it is clear that there was a certain coherence, an
underlying project behind Vandorist activity. This was the creation of a
union-based political movement - the outlines of which we described
in the preceding chapter. This was fundamentally no more than an elab
oration of the de facto position in which the unions found themselves
after 195 5. It was the expression of the desire of the majority section of
the union hierarchy to establish itself as the major political force rep
resenting Argentine workers, and as such to be negotiated with by
other political and social forces. In this sense Vandorism represented
the attempt of this leadership to consolidate and institutionalise the pol
itical power which had accrued to them both through their position as
representatives of a majority of organised workers and through their
role as the principal legalised expression of Peronism. While in 1958
they had delegated that power to an outsider, Arturo Frondizi, and
then maintained a blank vote position in the face of his ‘betrayal’, from
1962 on they were determined to, wherever possible, construct their
own political apparatus, based on their control of the union movement,
and thus deal directly with other social and political forces.
This project was often described as the creation of a partido obrero,
that is a working-class-based political party intimately connected with
the unions, and modelled along the lines of classic social democratic
labour parties. Evidently, such a project had certain historical roots
within Peronism* in particular the emergence of the Partido Laborista
in 1945. The conception as it appeared in the mid 1960s was most com
monly associated with the names of Olmos and Gazzera. Yet, it is im
portant to be clear as to what Vandorism meant by this conception.
Olmos, in an interview shortly before his death in 1968, after he had
broken with Vandor, was asked about his ‘enthusiastic defence of un
partido obrero, un partido clasista’. He felt called upon to correct his in
terviewer:
At a conference of the tobacco workers’ union in 1959 I in fact expounded just
the opposite; what I did demand was the domination for the unions in the tacti
cal leadership of the Peronist movement and I pointed out the role of the politi
cal actions of the workers’ movement. From this demonstration it was
perfectly clear that the workers’ movement was the great force, the basis and
the sole factor which had sustained Peronism in its most desperate moments,
and at that time I maintained that this hegemony must be exercised by the
union leaders... This, I insist, does not mean excluding other forces because
that would mean totally denying the essence of Peronism.21
From this two fundamental features emerge concerning the Vando-

rist project. First, the ideal political and social model of Vandor and the
union leadership remained that which they derived from the Peronist
experience of 1946-55. Olmos’s insistence that union hegemony did
not imply a clasista conception of the Peronist movement clearly indi
cated their commitment to a notion of Peronism as a multi-class
alliance whose ultimate political goal should be the formation of a
broad coalition with other ‘factors of power* in national life: the
church, socially conscious and nationally minded employers and the
armed forces.22 Notions of working-class autonomy and independent
activity which had been part of the militant discourse of the Resistance
era had, therefore, been largely erased from this concept of union hege
mony within the Peronist movement. Olmos, in a lecture given to
union cadres in 1966, spoke nostalgically of the pre-195 5 era which had
witnessed ‘the great fraternal embrace between armed forces and the
people* in the interests of the nation and social justice.23 It was a unity
which, Olmos affirmed, needed to be recreated.
Second, it becomes clear that the fundamental issue at stake for Van
dorism was the internal balance of forces within Peronism. A constant
theme of Peronist union propaganda in these years was to emphasise, as
we have seen, the social and political weight of unions in a wider

society. This implied, as Olmos’s statement makes clear, a claim to
hegemony within the Peronist movement against both the neo-
Peronists and the official political wing. But what it also implied was a
claim for relative independence from Perön himself. If they really were
‘the vertebral column* of the movement, as Perön himself was fond of
saying, then they must have the freedom to determine the tactics in
Argentina, to negotiate their own destiny. At the height of the dispute
with Perön and Isabel in 1965 and 1966 the influential Vandorist union
of power workers published an editorial in its journal which sum
marised this aspiration:
The fundamental condition for Justicialism to make strides on the national pol
itical scene must be that the workers* movement, the vital mass of its structure,
should not be relegated to being a mere appendage of the movement... more
over it is not possible to keep management of the movement in the hands of one
person, the key is the creation of a true leadership team made up of truly rep
resentative figures who work together with a team mentality; this organism
must plan the activities and the internal developments of the movement.24
This had been precisely the message of the Avellaneda congress a few
months previously, and was the root cause of the conflict with Perön at
this time.
Within this general framework the question of the political tactics to
be adopted was a flexible one. Vandorism was essentially agnostic and
opportunistic concerning political methods and forms. It was at this
level that Vandor*s pragmatism came into its own. In general it is evi
dent that his followers preferred to take advantage, when the oppor
tunity was offered, of the legal party-political system to achieve their
political goals. A leading spokesman of the Vandorist current empha
sised in 1965 that while the unions must keep their options open as far
as forms of struggle were concerned ‘in general we must avoid both the
tremendismo guerrillerista and abject collaboration,. and triumph
instead through successive electoral confrontations*.25 Indeed at times
the Vandorists were wont to wax lyrical about the fundamental rep
resentative role unions played within the political system, and how
they would reinvigorate the institutions of an exhausted liberal system.
This tone was particularly present after the 1965 elections. An editorial
in the petrol workers* union paper immediately after the elections en
thused over the election of union candidates. They had, it said, shown
that ‘the organic expression of the masses is the unions and these, con
founding all forecasts, have revolutionised the electoral and representa
tive system*.26
Their preference for electoral politics was logical. They fully appreci
ated that their ability to gain power and influence within the political
system came from their capacity to mobilise their membership in politi
cal terms as Peron*s delegates in Argentina and, in more purely union
terms, as organisers of labour. It was the pressure which they could
exert through this mobilising and representative capacity which was the
crucial basis of their negotiating position. By definition a pluralistic
electoral system gave them the most scope for the exercise of such
pressure and negotiation. They were fond of telling journalists that
they had the tactical option of either achieving power through elections
or, if their electoral gains provoked a military reaction, of leading a
popular resistance to military dictatorship.27 They were, however,
under no illusions about the difficulties military regimes posed for
them in terms of political bargaining and pressuring. Negotiations with
military regimes tended to be one-sided affairs, and from personal ex
perience in the years after 1955 most of them knew what popular resist
ance to military regimes could entail in terms of their own comfort and
prestige.
Nevertheless, this general preference should not blind us to two im
portant qualifications. First, that as union leaders aware of the realpoli-
tik of post-195 5 Argentina they had to take account of the possibility -
even probability - of military intervention. Vandor regularly received
military visitors in the metal workers* headquarters, as did José Alonso
in the CGT. As one union leader explained to a correspondent who
questioned him about rumours of Peronist involvement in negotiations
with the army concerning a coup against the radical government: ‘We
have a duty to speculate with these situations, they are facts of reality
and we cannot ignore them, but this does not mean that we are support
ing a coup d*état.*28 Thus, while they might speculate with military dis
satisfaction, they did not themselves initiate discussions about the
overthrow of the democratic party system.
Moreover, the fact remained that while electoral politics and a plural
ist system was an attractive option, it still remained exactly that - one
option among several. By reason of the fact that they were union
leaders with a base outside the political system, they did not have the
commitment to, and stake in, electoral politics which traditional politi
cal groups had. It was this fact which partly underlay the suspicion of
the neo-Peronists and the politicians of justicialism towards the
Vandorists in the 1962-6 period. As politicians their future possibilities
were entirely bound up with the continuing operation of a pluralistic
electoral system, and the acceptance of Peronism as a legitimate conten-
der within that system. The Peronist union leaders could, on the other
hand, face the prospect of a military interruption of that system with far
greater equanimity.
There was also the fact that, given the nature of the ‘political game* in
Argentina in these years, with its implicit limitations on the toleration
of Peronist power and influence, the political gains to be made by the
unions were peculiarly meagre. Participation in the party system while
undoubtedly a source of power for union leaders, also equally certainly
had its debilitating side and by early 1966 the feeling of disillusionment
was gaining ground among the mainstream Vandorist leadership. This
feeling was heightened by two factors. First, the passing of decree 969
by the Radical government, with its clauses specifically attacking the
union leadership’s political activity and their internal control of their
unions through clauses enforcing internal democracy and granting local
branches financial autonomy, seemed to symbolise the limitations to,
and the debilitating effects of, political entanglement. Second, the vic
tory of Peron’s personal candidate in the Mendoza elections, which
confounded the political schemes of Vandor and much of the local
leadership, underlined in the most emphatic terms the limitations to
their independent political activity. The high hopes they had enter
tained a mere twelve months before about their ability to use the system
to their own advantage had now all but vanished. From the Mendoza
election until the coup of June it is clear that the Vandorist leadership
was looking with increasing favour toward a military intervention to
put an end to this ‘juego imposible*. The Peronist response to the coup
was, indeed, uniformly warm. It was, said the petrol workers’ journal,
‘the end of a regime where empty words, inaction and the slow but sure
collapse of the Republic were the definitive characteristics of a system
which many years ago ceased to be effective*.29 The contrast with the
same journal’s effusive praise some eighteen months earlier for the way
union participation in the 1965 elections had revitalised the ailing lib
eral system was evidence of both their underlying agnosticism regard
ing political forms, and the genuine sense of disillusionment which they
undoubtedly felt.
José Alonso and neo-corporatist illusions

From 1963 onward José Alonso, the secretary general of the CGT, and
a group of ideologues and advisers, began to put forward a series of
documents analysing the necessary ‘change of structures* that Argen
tina required if she were to achieve real development and social justice.
The documents were chiefly intended to establish the image of a
forward-looking, technically capable, workers* central which could
discuss responsibly and scientifically the future of the nation. In econ
omic terms there was little in them which distinguished them from gen
eral developmentalist and Peronist philosophy. Politically, however,
they did address themselves consistently to the theme of the necessary
political preconditions for the desired economic and social changes.
The clearest exposition of these ideas was to be found in a document
entitled La C G T en marcha hacia el cambio de estructuras, published in
January 1965. After analysing the economic and social situation it
turned its attention to the political scene. The conclusion reached con
cerning the existing political parties was that ‘there do not exist in
Argentina, either qualitatively or quantitatively, political parties
which can be said to have representativity. . . It is therefore inadmiss
ible that the political parties should be regarded as the only channel of
expression of the political life of the Argentine citizen . . . the great
popular movements do not have, on the political plane, possibilities of
real expression.*30 In contrast to this limited form of representation the
document counterposes the legitimate representation that social groups
can acquire for themselves if the institutional organisms which should
fulfil this function do not in fact do so adequately. Hence, given the
rejection of political parties as inadequate representative bodies, bodies
such as the CGT naturally came to assume this function themselves.
The representativity of the CGT in comparison with political parties
was then proved statistically by demonstrating the number of affiliates
it spoke for. The crucial problem which the document then broached
was how to institutionalise this representative function and to assure
the social group proper recognition in the deliberations of the state.
This issue was resolved by advocating ‘the necessity of creating a
specific organism, with union participation and power of decision at
the highest level of the state*.31 Only on the basis of this institutional
formula could a genuine effort be made toward the necessary economic
and social changes.
What this analysis implied in political terms, apart from a critique of
the efficacy of liberal representative forms, was not clearly spelled out.
In the document we are examining it is fairly clear that the new rep
resentative organisms are conceived of as supplementing existing politi
cal parties rather than replacing them altogether. However, at other
times, a more thoroughly corporatist analysis was proffered. Thus, for
example, in a union document of 1966 we find the following analysis:
The participation in the general solutions of the authentic and representative

dynamic forces of national life is vital; in the labour sphere the employers’ or
ganisations and the forces of labour; in other spheres the institutions of culture
and art, the sectors of technology and national science. All these must, by
means of genuine representatives make up an organism which can act together
with government and propose solutions to the extent that the country needs a
great national solution. This organism will have to be made up of teams drawn
from specific activities which will investigate and analyse the problems of each
sector so that afterwards in a leading body, integrated by representatives of all
the teams, partial solutions can be studied in the light of the overall context.32
A judicious mixture of neo-corporatism and technocratism was clearly
apparent, as was its corollary of a denial of the legitimacy of traditional
politics. This tone had, indeed, been implicit in much desarrollista
ideology, with its consistent emphasis on the need to take into account
factors of power such as the army, the church and employers’ organis
ations. While the specific political form of organisation of these ‘factors
of power* had generally been described as a ‘National and Popular
Front’ which would participate in the electoral process, the emphasis
on crucial non-party-political forces - the fuerzas dinamicas - could
evidently imply a more corporatist solution.
Despite the clear attraction of corporatist solutions and forms for
many of the advisers who surrounded Alonso in the CGT, in general
the contours of the desired new forms of participation remained very
vague. At times, indeed, it seemed that the critique of the liberal party
system led to a form of political quietism, the opting out of any form of
political activity. Alonso himself, writing in 1964, stated that there
were three ways of arriving at the sources of power which would allow
the unions to either share power, or achieve sole power themselves.
One was through political competition, another through violent revol
utionary action, and a third was what he called ‘multiple unionism’.
Alonso rejected the first two alternatives and chose instead the path of
peaceful transformation which would be achieved ‘through the realis
ation of social works which we call “multiple unionism” ’. This union
ism was based on the premise that a union must be involved in every
aspect of the life of its members, catering for a wide range of social
needs. He went on to talk of ‘the unions* own buildings capable of
catering for a total union activity . . . the building of recreation facili
ties . . . a place in the open air, able to provide a happy and healthy day
for the union member and his family . .. the construction of workers*
housing’. He ended with a question and an assertion: ‘Is this not a good
way of showing the good features of a union; is it not a good way of
achieving the social transformation we desire? If all the workers’ organ-
isations carried out this sort of activity the sum total would inevitably
give us the union government we want so much.*33 This conception,
which developed the notion of the social service function of the union
to its logical extreme, also explicitly resolved the problem of the state
and political power. For Alonso, it would seem, the creation of what
was virtually a state within a state by the union movement would inex
orably lead, by force of example, to a fundamental shift in political
power relations. The unions needed to simply dedicate themselves to
developing their social services.
However, more commonly, the critique of political liberalism led to
a tendency to look, implicitly at least, toward the military as a means of
concretely achieving ‘adequate* forms of political participation. This
was to be achieved either as equal partners in a reborn union-military
alliance which would overthrow the decadent liberal regime, or as en
thusiastic followers of a military coup. Alonso, who was well known
for his good relations with the military, was one of the first to welcome
Ongania’s coup in June 1966
There was no fundamental ideological disagreement between Alonso
and the dominant Vandorist sector of the movement. The differences
that existed largely concerned issues of tactics and personal ambition.
The Vandorists were quite capable, as we have noted, of lambasting the
decadence and lack of representative credibility of liberal political or
ganisms when the situation demanded. They, too, could be supporters
of military neo-corporatist designs. Indeed, in this light it is tempting
to see this strong corporatist undercurrent in Peronist unionism as a
logical extension of some semi-fascist, corporatist element present in
original Peronist philosophy, which was always liable to surface within
Peronist unionism. Yet, while there was certainly a degree of influence
from European corporatist and fascist thought in early Peronism it
would seem unwarranted to seek the explanation for neo-corporatist
undercurrents in some original sin of early Peronism.
In the first place, although anti-liberalism and indeed anti-politicism
were a strong element in Peronist ideology we must be clear as to what
this actually signified. While Perôn himself and other Peronist ideol
ogues sometimes tried to give this a profound theoretical content, in
general within post-195 5 Peronism it referred to the rejection of the
anti-democratic political set up that existed rather than a rejection of
pluralistic politics as such. Amado Olmos in the lecture to union cadres
to which we have already referred, vehemently castigated those who
appealed to the ‘factors of power’ formula as a justification for rejecting
the democratic process as such: ‘In Argentina the forms of représenta-
/ deology and politics in Peronist unions 2 0 3
tive democracy have served, provided that they were without fraud, to
carry the representatives of the people to power. And only fraud and
violence have been able to deny this reality.’34
A political set up which marginalised or at best restricted the open
political expression of the majority party of the working class, inevi
tably had only a limited legitimacy. If we add to this the reality of a
powerful union apparatus with both a political and economic function
then we hardly need to look to a putative allegiance to some original
fascistic ideas for an explanation of neo-corporatists tendencies. Even
Alonso, who was exceptional in the consistency and depth of his
espousal of neo-corporatism, took his ideas principally from social
catholic, communitarian ideologues rather than from any pre-1955
fascistic theory.35
The Vandorists opposed Alonso’s espousal of such views from his
position in the CGT, not so much for reasons of ideological disagree
ment as for tactical considerations. At a time when they were engaged
in the building of a political party independent of Perön’s direct con
trol which could conquer influence in stages through electoral contests,
Alonso’s jeremiads against the political system as a whole struck a
discordant note. When the document La CG T en marcha hacia el
cambio de estructuras was presented to the CGT national committee in
January 1965 for approval, Alonso defended it by saying that with it the
CGT was showing that it played a role that no political party could
fulfil. Vandor’s reply to this was to suggest that the secretary general
must have forgotten that the Justicialist Party had presented a full pro
gramme. He successfully moved that the document be referred back.36
Throughout the election campaign of 1965 Alonso continued to empha
sise through CGT statements and documents the futility of the elec
tions and how traditional politics could solve none of the nation’s
problems. Underlying this disagreement was also the issue of who was
to negotiate and bargain with Peronist electoral weight. Alonso with his
personal base in the weak garment workers’ union found himself
increasingly marginalised after the Plan de Lucha had petered out, as
Vandor through his control of the 62 Organisations built up his politi
cal influence after the 1965 elections. Alonso’s emphasis on the superior
representative credentials of unions in general, and the CGT in particu
lar, was in part an attempt to alter this internal balance of power.
The Peronist left: duros and guerrilleros

Beyond these sectors of mainstream Peronist unionism were those who
had formed the nucleus of the Unea dura in the pre-1962 period, and
who were coming to be referred to with increasing frequency as form
ing part of a Peronist left. Weakened by repression, exhaustion and de
sertion, the duros were by 1963 increasingly marginalised both within
their individual unions and within the 62 Organisations. In June 1963
they organised a national plenary meeting of the Unea dura in Rosario,
and in October of the same year they were still capable of drawing
together some 300 activists from the Federal Capital for a meeting in the
leather cutters* union.37 The reality was, however, that they were a
declining force organisationally. By 1963 most of their leaders had been
forced out of the 62 Organisations. Sebastian Borro had, for example,
been forced to resign on the grounds that since he had not worked in the
meatpacking industry since 1959 he was not formally a trade unionist
and thus inelligible to sit in the 62.38 Borro’s case was not atypical of
many leading duros. By the mid 1960s many did not hold office in their
unions. While they often maintained considerable personal prestige
because of past actions, they had little organisational base from which
to oppose Vandorist domination of the movement. The union influence
they maintained was largely limited to a few small unions like the phar
macy workers, telephone workers, naval construction and leather cut
ting, as well as a number of smaller unions in the interior. Although the
textile workers* union was generally considered to be within the Unea
dura the Framini leadership was increasingly reluctant to commit itself
openly. There were also some attempts to draw together dissident
groups both within the unions and beyond. In 1964 a Confederation of
Orthodox Peronist Groupings was formed under Jorge Di Pascuale’s
leadership but its impact within the union movement was minimal.39
The extent to which this nucleus of duros could be distinguished in
terms of formal ideology from the dominant currents within Peronist
unionism was limited. As in the Frondizi era the Unea dura continued
to draw on the moral capital, the distinct ‘structure of feeling* of the Re
sistance years - its small acts of everyday heroism, its arrests, its
martyrs. It increasingly came to define itself in terms of defending the
values of the Resistance and of opposing those it saw as the chief threat
to those values - the union bureaucracy. Opposition to Vandor and
Vandorism became a dominant tenet. The duros saw in Vandorism a be
trayal of the sacrifices made in the pre-1962 Resistance era, of the possi
bilities that had existed then, and of the communal experience of the
pueblo peronista. Vandorism was abandoning a position of principled
intransigence; it had been corrupted by the lure of political and union
power into accepting a modus vivendi with a fundamentally illegitimate
and anti-popular regime. The epitome of this betrayal was the union
leadership’s project to turn Peronism into a union-based political
party within the system. For them this implied acceptance of a system
designed to exclude Peronism, and Perön himself, from political
power. The price to be paid for union participation within the
system could only be the abandonment of Peronism’s authentic
mission.
The duros counterposed to this participation within the political
system the maintenance of the ‘true* essence of the Peronist movement,
its ‘real* values as embodied in the Resistance to the post-195 5 military
regime. Marcelo Repezza, a member of the executive committee of
Peronismo de Acciôn Revolucionaria, a Cordoba-based group, com
menting on the July 1963 presidential elections argued that: ‘there must
be no participation in the elections because to do so would be to ignore
the authentic revolutionary feeling of our m ovement... you can’t just
throw away an experience of eight years of permanent and constant
struggle to conquer power for the people’.40 Indeed, it was precisely on
the basis of a rejection of a reality which did seem ‘to throw to one side*
this experience of solidarity, heroism and suffering that the duros took
their stand.
An intrinsic part of this stand was a continuing and basic loyalty to
Perön. Indeed the existence of a clearly defined ‘left* current in this
period depended crucially on Perön himself and his tactical needs. The
duros were able to organise most effectively in this period in the space
provided for them by Peron’s decision to move against a dominant cur
rent that was threatening his control of the movement, or by his need to
give Peronism a radical stance to enhance his political bargaining pos
ition at a specific juncture. It was, therefore, very much his creature
and was, in general, as strong and clearly defined as he wished it to be.
Perön was for the duros the ultimate arbiter of the ‘true* essence of
Peronism and of its tactical and strategic needs. This was clearly mani
fested in their reaction to the attempt of the Vandorist leadership to give
the movement as a whole an institutionalised, formally democratic
structure. Most Peronist unionists had shown only mild interest at best
in the attempt to reconstruct Peronism as a political movement in the
early months of Frondizi’s government. In the mid 1960s when any
such formalisation could only be dominated by the union bureaucracy
this lack of interest had turned, for the duros, into overt hostility to the
whole idea. A speaker at the October 1963 meeting of activists in the
Federal Capital made this clear when referring to the Junta Reorganiza-
dora recently set up by Perön: ‘If what they are trying to do here is to
organise a democratic party with authorities elected democratically we
are sure that this is not Peron’s position.*41
For the duros the lack of a formalised party-political structure was a
virtue since it made easier the maintenance of the essential link between
the leader and his people. This in turn reflected a more profound lacuna
at the centre of radical Peronist unionism. Its militant syndicalism -
what we have defined as an ouvrierist commitment as it emerged in the
Resistance era - left the issue of state power and the forms of political
organisation of the working class essentially unaddressed. It could be
argued that this could be traced back historically to the failure of the
original laborista project in the early years of the Peronist regime.
While, as we have seen, there were elements of working-class Peronism
which began to raise notions of working-class autonomy and political
organisation during the Resistance period these were largely still-born.
Certainly, the duros as the inheritors of this tradition filled this vacuum
by extolling the essential ‘leader-masses* axis around which the work
ing class should organise. This spoke to certain crucial notions in
Peronist working-class culture. The symbolic meeting between the
leader and his people on 17 October unaided by any political structures
was certainly important here, as was the figure of Evita symbolising the
unique dialogue between the workers and the state, personified in the
figures of Perön and Evita. For the duros the recreation of this unique
relationship became both a solution to the problem of state power and
political forms and also a guarantee of defence against the corrupting
pretensions of the union hierarchy.
That this also implied placing their organisational fate largely in
Peron’s hands also became clear in the 1962-6 period. Thus, for
example, they responded to Peron’s ‘turn to the left* in mid 1962 when
he was adopting a radical stance toward the Guido government, only to
be left perplexed and uncertain by his orders to support the popular
conservative Solano Lima in the elections nine months later.42 In a simi
lar fashion Perön momentarily resurrected the left in mid 1964 when
he encouraged the formation of the Movimiento Revolucionario
Peronista, MRP. The programme put forward at its founding con
ference was in some senses the most radical to be espoused within the
movement. It maintained that ‘the people must oppose the regime’s
army of occupation with its own armed forces and workers* militia
which will allow it to conquer power*. The MRP set itself the task of
‘building the structure and developing the centralised revolutionary
leadership’.43
Yet, for all its programmatic radicalism, the MRP had little substance
behind the revolutionary rhetoric. Encouraged initially by Perön, it

was an unhappy amalgam of union duros> some youth sectors led by
Gustavo Rearte, and those of the linea Villalôn which had defined
itself as Castrist and insurrectionist. The unifying factor behind this un
likely alliance was opposition to Vandor and loyalty to Perön. Framini
accepted the leadership of the new organisation, though he seems to
have played little part in its inception. Its rapid demise was due to
Peron’s lack of support for the venture. While the creation of an oppo
sition grouping loyal to himself and with radical credentials was a
useful tactical weapon at a time when the power and independence of
the union leadership was becoming a threat to his position, he did not
want this grouping to be anything other than a tactical pressure
weapon. The creation of something approaching a dominant ‘revol
utionary* current would have been counter to his whole conception of
the type of movement Peronism ought to be. He saw one of the move
ment’s strengths as its all-embracing, umbrella-like nature and he was
adept at using its different wings; in this context the resurgence of the
‘left* at any given time could be no more than a convenient tactical ploy.
In late 1965 Perön again called up the ‘left’ current as part of his cam
paign against Vandor. They emerged from obscurity to join with the
right of the union movement under Alonso to form the 62 Organis
ations de pie junto a Peron. The sole basis for this unity with a figure
who they had regarded as a leading ‘betrayer* of the true essence of
Peronism was loyalty to Perön as the name of the new organisation
made perfectly clear.
Many militants within this ‘left* current were content to view them
selves in this light, as a tactical option available to Perön. Sebastian
Borro who took part in the founding conference of the MRP stated
afterwards that ‘we will offer Perön the revolutionary possibility if, as
seems likely, negotiations with the government turn out badly*.44 The
meagre nature of the left’s independent ambitions, its own limited esti
mation of its perspectives and possibilities is apparent, as is the personal
tragedy of a generation of militants symbolised by Sebastian Borro’s
utterance. A personal trajectory which included the prisons of Aram-
buru’s regime and the leadership of the Lisandro de la Torre occupation
had ended in the farce of the MRP, and all in the name of loyalty to one
man. Such a trajectory could, perhaps, be taken as an unfitting epitaph
for a generation of militants.
In terms of formal ideology this left developed very little by which to
distinguish itself. The Programme of Huerta Grande issued at the
height of Peron’s ‘turn to the left* in 1962 contained little to distinguish
it from the programme of other tendencies within the movement. Its
political strategy, too, was in general ill-defined. The plenary meeting
of the Unea dura in Rosario called for ‘revolutionary abstentionism* in
the face of elections.45 The duros rejected the union bureaucracy’s strat
egy of electoral participation and offered what Borro termed the ‘revol
utionary possibility*. Yet what this ‘possibility* meant concretely was
not at all clear. In a sense, the entire dynamic of resistance and re
pression that had followed 1955 contributed toward this lack of formal
ideological definition. We have already commented how the experience
of the Resistance tended to be embodied in a distinct set of values and
structures of feeling, rather than the development of a distinctive rad
ical ideology. Peronism within the Peron/anti-Peron dichotomy that
dominated the political and social context was per se leftist, anti
establishment and revolutionary, and loyalty to its exiled and vilified
leader often seemed enough of a definition of a political strategy.
Hence, too, the nature of the terminology in which the Peronist left
defined its enemies and its own distinctiveness. Its political vocabulary
was essentially a moral one. The union bureaucracy had ‘betrayed* the
hard struggles against anti-Peronist governments, the right were those
who had been corrupted and betrayed the essence of Peronism; ulti
mately those who had betrayed Perön himself. Concepts like leales,
traidores, duros, hlandos, fe y lealtad, intransigenciay which were the
traditional core of the duros*terminology, referred ultimately to moral
qualities and ethical values rather than political programmes and ideo
logical maxims. As such they were both a hindrance and a help to dissi
dent sectors of Peronist unionism. On the one hand, the lack of a
defined and distinctive ideology and politics left them unarmed when
faced with the overwhelming practical logic of mainstream unionism,
and very much subject to Peron’s tactical whims. O n the other hand,
their assertion of the validity of these values, and the historical experi
ence from which they derived, spoke to a clear feeling among both mili
tants, and we may presume rank and file, that, whatever the necessity
and inevitability of compromise and integration, Peronism as a social
movement and working-class expression was about something else as
well. In this sense, the ‘left* within Peronist unionism came to represent
the conscience of the movement, a voice which continued to be relevant
for many militants and others in spite of the personal compromises and
accommodations they had had to make. While in many ways they
shared the same formal language of dissent and criticism with the main
stream bureaucracy - a rhetoric which targeted the ‘oligarchy’ and the
‘parasitic classes* tied to ‘imperialism’ - the ‘left’s* insistence on defining
itself in terms of the values and experience deriving from class struggle,
suffering and solidarity, imbued that language with a radically different
tone and implications.
There were, too, those who attempted to go beyond this moral
intransigence and reassess in a more radical light the nature and needs of
Peronism. John William Cooke, for example, in his writings in these
years, criticised the unthinking nature of the personal loyalty to Peron
that characterised much of the ‘left’s* position. In a letter to Peron, he
very clearly denounced what he called the fetishism of el lider, the sub
stituting of hard concrete analysis by what he described as ‘tribal fanati
cisms*.46 In another letter to Peron he added: ‘Instead of concrete
positions in the face of an equally concrete reality, we are given general
formulas, we all want to be free, sovereign and that there should be
social justice, but this is pure rhetoric if it is not translated into concrete
strategic proposals.’47
Cooke attempted to provide an analysis of the political, union
bureaucracy that dominated Peronism. In his writings he moved away
from the moralism of notions such as traidores and leales and suggested
that the root of the bureaucracy lay in Peronism’s nature as a polyclass
alliance. To fight such a bureaucracy would only be possible for Cooke
by changing a heterogeneous movement into a revolutionary party, not
by retreating into a reassertion of the traditional values of Peronism.
Cooke thus very directly confronted the problem of political power.
Cooke defined the task of a left Peronism - a revolutionary Peronism in
his terms - as the creation of a vanguard party that sought to reconcile
the politics of Peronism with the role that objectively the confrontation
of social forces in the everyday life of workers gave to it. ‘Peronism as a
mass movement is and always has been superior to Peronism as a struc
ture for the masses; for this reason spontaneism has always dominated
the planned action of the masses.*48
Cooke emphasised Peronism’s role as an anti-imperialist movement.
He defined Argentina as a semi-colony, exploited and dominated by
foreign - principally N orth American - capital. As such her fundamen
tal interests coincided with those of other nations struggling against
imperialism. Peronism as the expression of Argentina’s anti-imperialist
struggle should seek her natural allies amongst other anti-imperialist
movements. For Cooke, the end result of this anti-imperialist struggle
in Argentina would be the introduction of a national form of socialism.
Cooke specifically rejected Peronism’s traditional ideological notion of
a third position between Soviet communism and Western capitalism.
While counselling vigilance towards the USSR and its satellite national
parties, Cooke emphasised to Perön that in the final resort there were
only two sides in the world struggle - the capitalist/ imperialist and the
socialist/anti-imperialist - and that Perön should have no hesitation in
committing Peronism to the latter.
The influence of Cooke’s Cuban experience is apparent here. The
notion of the vanguard political party which became increasingly de
bated in certain circles of the Peronist movement at this time had a
largely Castrist origin. Intimately related to this was the growing
attraction of ideas of guerrilla warfare derived largely from the Cuban
experience. Focismo was by the mid 1960s almost a commonplace
among certain sectors of Peronism. Cooke was in Cuba for most of the
early and mid 1960s and in a certain sense his championing of focismo
was the direct product of an isolated militant cut off from the main
stream of the workers’ movement and its daily struggles. N or should
this isolation be viewed in either purely personal or geographic terms.
The appeal of guerrilla strategy to militants inside Argentina at this time
must be seen fundamentally as resulting from the process of demobilis
ation of the mass movement in the early 1960s, the consequent domi
nation of an accommodationist union bureaucracy and the margin
alising of the most militant activists and leaders which this process en
tailed.
The attraction of focismo for many of these militants was evident.
First, the emphasis placed in guerrilla theory on the victory of subjec
tive will over the objective conditions was bound to appeal to activists
as a means of defying a reality of demobilisation and isolation. Second,
the notion of a dedicated elite acting independently though in the name
of the masses and galvanising them by their conflict with the oppressive
authorities found a ready echo in militants increasingly cut off from any
possibility of meaningful intervention in mass struggles - activists with
no field of meaningful action. Third, guerrilla theory did provide a con
vincing solution to the problem of what had gone wrong with the
movement, why the confrontation of the resistance and the militancy of
the Peronist workers had been insufficient to achieve a real break
through. The answer was found in a lack of discipline and of an armed
vanguard.
The number of union militants who followed Cooke’s path was small
in absolute terms. Some figures from the linea dura did move in this
direction, and a separation tended to emerge between the more tra
ditional duros and those who now defined themselves as ‘revolutionary*
Peronists. While some union figures like Jorge Di Pascuale and
Gustavo Rearte, a leader of the cosmetic workers and the Revolution-
/ deology and politics in Peronist unions 11 1
ary Peronist Youth, underwent training in Cuba, the majority of the
traditional duros opted for waiting it out and, in Sebastian Borro’s
words, ‘having faith in Perön’.49 The impact of the guerrilla strategy
was, on the other hand, especially strong among a younger generation
of political militants. For them the guerrilla acted as a crucial explana
tory variable, the absence of which had doomed earlier struggles. While
Cooke made some attempt to place focismo within the context of a
Peronism transformed into a mass revolutionary party, most of the
younger militants who began to espouse the doctrine in these years, and
in even greater numbers during the military regime of 1966-73, con
ceived of it as a means and encLin itself. For this younger generation the
reality of Peronism in the mid and late 1960s seemed plain enough: a
movement which embodied the anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist
strivings of the Argentine masses, but a movement dominated by a
union bureaucracy which had profoundly submerged and stifled these
longings. Guerrilla warfare, armed struggle in all its many ideological
variants, offered to these militants a solution to this dilemma. It
implied an effective separation from union struggle since the power of
the union bureaucracy was taken to be complete, and despite the con
stant evocation of the symbolic figure of the working class it meant, in
the end, an elitist dismissal of the Peronist working class’s history in all
its complexity and contradictoriness. For this younger generation even
Cooke’s attempt to find a deeper political and ideological explanation
for the failure of the Resistance was forgotten as they reduced the
question to one of fire power and individual will power. The results of
this legacy were to be tragically apparent in Argentina after 1973.
PART FIVE
Workers and the

Revolution Argentina'.
from Ongama to the
return of Perön, 1966-73
9
The Peronist union leaders under
siege: new actors and new challenges
During the dictatorship there was certainly a relationship of forces

favourable to struggle. Everyone, the political parties of the middle class
and the Cordoba workers* movement were opposed to the government.
Everything which came from the government was rejected. Therefore,
you had to struggle to change it. There was a great struggle in which a
majority of the population was involved, and so if we were hit hard we
had the sympathy, the support of the whole population. We were all
together against the dictatorship ... So anything we did to create a
mood, a counterproposal against a government measure was correct and
everyone supported us from all points of view and without political
distinctions.
Militant in the Cordoba light and power union, 1973
The R evolution Argentina and the crisis of the union hierarchy

Despite a publicly expressed caution and reserve, the Peronist union
leadership could scarcely conceal their satisfaction with the course of
events which had led to the ouster of Arturo Illia. Leaders of a labour
movement which claimed over 2 million members they had, under
Vandor’s leadership, developed a strategy which had led to their re-
emergence within the Argentine status quo as a social and political force
of undeniable weight; a force with which any aspirant to political
power in Argentina would have to bargain. Events of the first month of
the new regime of General Juan Carlos Ongania seemed to bear wit
ness to the success of that strategy and to bear out the optimism of
union leaders’ calculations. An apparently sympathetic figure was ap
pointed to the Ministry of Labour and many of the Radical govern
ment’s measures designed to weaken the power of the union leadership
were suspended. To symbolise a new era in state/union relations
Augusto Vandor signed the new contract with metal-working employ
ers in the presidential palace surrounded by dignitaries of the new mili
tary regime.
2IJ
2 1 6 Workers and the 'Revolution Argentina \ 1966-73
Within the union movement and within Peronism the position of the
union hierarchy remained largely unchallenged. While their recent dis
agreements with Perön had demonstrated the lack of wisdom of di
rectly challenging the political power of the exiled caudilloy the
opposition which had emerged around this issue in the year prior to the
June coup had made little headway in challenging their control of the
union apparatus. The Peronist left was a marginal force and the mili
tants of the Resistance generation remained isolated and scattered.
Vandor and his followers held uncontested sway over a highly organ
ised working class which had shown its capacity for massive and disci
plined mobilisations but whose actions had been increasingly tightly
controlled by the union hierarchy, with little of the active mass partici
pation of an earlier era.
The tacit support of the union leadership for the June coup was based
on a profound antipathy toward the Illia government, which they re
garded as both lacking in legitimacy and hostile to their needs. In ad
dition, they empathised with military figures who apparently shared
their analysis of the solutions needed for Argentina’s national prob
lems. Their frequent contacts with the figures behind the coup in the
months prior to June, together with the weight of union presence in
Argentine society, seemed to assure them of privileged access to the
new public authorities. Moreover, a military regime would, they
reasoned, severely curb Perön’s ability to manoeuvre politically and
exert his authority within the movement at their expense. For all their
plausibility these calculations were to be rapidly exposed as illusions.1
Within a year the union movement was in disarray, faced with a strong
authoritarian regime determined to force through the rationalisation of
the Argentine economy and the modernisation of the Argentine state.
This confrontation with the Ongania regime was to plunge the
Peronist union hierarchy into a growing crisis which would culminate
in the years following 1969, even as the military authorities retreated
from the policies which had triggered the crisis in the 1966-9 period.
The crisis of the union leadership was characterised by a number of fea
tures: a growing problem of credibility vis-à-vis their rank and file at a
time of radicalised social conflict; the emergence of a vigorous oppo
sition movement within the unions which profoundly questioned the
existing union structures; a growing problem of internal divisions
amongst themselves; and finally an increasing danger of their isolation
within a resurgent Peronism as their traditional domination within the
movement was challenged by new actors.
The immediate cause of this crisis lay in the policies of the new mili-
The Peronist union leaders under siege 2 1 7
tary regime. O n the one hand the new government suspended all politi
cal activity and organisation, hoping to thus abolish the complex
system of political bargaining through which rival social groups
attempted to press the claims of their constituencies on the state. In the
minds of the ideologists of the Revolution Argentina this inevitably
led, in a society such as Argentina in which social groups were so highly
organised and mobilised, to a political system of great fragility which
condemned political authorities to an endless round of horsetrading
and vacillating economic policy. The sine qua non for the effective im
plementation of their economic policy was, therefore, to relieve the
state of such obligations b y suspending the operation of pluralistic
party politics. Yet, one of the main elements of the Peronist union
leadership’s power, as it had emerged after 1958, had been precisely its
ability to participate in a political system which obliged governments
and political groups to bargain for their neutrality or support. One of
the central premises of Vandor’s strategy had been the effectiveness of
applying Peronist union pressure within a political system charac
terised by weak governments and divided political adversaries. In this
sense it is clear that the union leaders’ ethusiasm for the overthrow of
Illia was a fundamental miscalculation. By eliminating the ability of
social groups to bargain politically Ongania laid the basis for the
emergence of a state controlled by military and economic elites which
was not beholden to other interest groups.2
The principal purpose of such an exercise was to push through the
economic plan which was finally formulated in early 1967 and associ
ated with the Minister of Economy, Adelbert Krieger Vasena. The main
target of this newly immunised state authority was the working class
and the union movement. Krieger Vasena’s economic plan was not en
tirely novel. It represented a logical continuation of developmentalist
strategies to modernise the Argentine economy. Modernisation and
rationalisation would lead to the development of a dominant, dynamic
sector of the economy based on those industries established by the first
developmentalist wave of the late 1950s and early 1960s and dominated
by foreign capital. O n the basis of this modern manufacturing sector of
durable consumer goods and modern capital goods Argentina would
compete on the world market as an exporter of certain manufactured
products.
The development of this dynamic sector was to be achieved by a sig
nificant income redistribution away from wage earners and the agrarian
sector towards urban employers. This would be achieved through rig
orous state control of wages and state redirection of the resources gen-
2 1 8 Workers and the 'Revolution Argentina *, 1966-73
erated by agrarian exports. A tight monetarist stabilisation plan was
introduced consisting of wage controls, fiscal restraint, credit restric
tion and a devaluation of the peso. In addition to helping achieve the
desired changes in income distribution this would also reduce inflation
and lead to general cost predictability so important for modern
companies. Krieger Vasena’s economic plan also proposed the eradi
cation of what were considered to be irrational and unproductive areas
of the economy. A principal target of rationalisation was to be the state
sector - particularly transportation, but also in general the government
bureaucracy - and subsidised regional economies. Another clear target
was the small to medium-size national businesses which had previously
used their access to the political resources of the state to gain economic
protection. Access to tax exemptions, credit lines, state contracts, tariff
protection and monopoly concessions were drastically reduced as their
ability to pressure the state was reduced by Ongania’s suspension of
the ‘political game*. The logical result of this policy was to be the
intense concentration of economic resources in the dynamic pole of the
Argentine economy.3
By imposing tight limits on wage increases and suspending normal
collective bargaining, and at the same time suspending the operation of
the political system, the military regime succeeded in undermining the
two basic sources of union bargaining power in Argentine society.
Wage control and the suspension of democratic politics were scarcely
new; what was novel, at least in most recent Argentine history, was the
existence of an authoritarian regime which had greatly concentrated
and centralised state power and was determined to make unambiguous
use of the power of the state against the unions and the working class.
The new regime’s determination to control, and if necessary repress,
the labour movement was evident even before the formulation of
Krieger Vasena’s economic plan. In October 1966 the government
announced a completely new labour regime in Argentina’s ports, abol
ishing many labour gains dating back to 1946. When the port workers*
union, Sindicato Unido Portuarios Argentinos (SUPA), declared a pro
test strike it was immediately intervened. At the same time the govern
ment began the unilateral application of rationalisation schemes in the
railroads and the sugar industry of the north west. In response to this
and Krieger Vasena’s economic plan the CGT announced a Plan of
Struggle which would culminate, if concessions were not forthcoming,
in a general strike. The government retaliated by reinstating the Radical
government’s decree 969 which sought to strictly control union func
tioning; the authorities also broke off talks with the CGT and banned
all public meetings. When the CGT reluctantly, in the face of govern
ment intransigence, declared a 24-hour general strike for 1 March
1967 Ongania’s response was to suspend the juridical status of the tex
tile workers, metal workers, telephone workers, pharmaceutical
workers and the Tucuman sugar workers. O n 15 March the principal
railroad union, Union Ferroviaria, was intervened and its leaders fired
from their posts in the rail system. Nationally salaries were frozen for
eighteen months and the collective bargaining law, 14,250, was sus
pended. Faced with this débâcle the CGT appointed a commission to
seek to renew talks with the authorities. The response was silence. The
dilemma the regime had placed the union leadership in was, thus, clear:
on the one hand their institutional existence would be threatened if they
resisted government policy and on the other they risked losing credi
bility with their members as they experienced the impact of that policy.
The first manifestation of the crisis this situation provoked within the
Peronist union leadership came at the congress called to normalise the
CG T in March 1968. The congress elected Raimundo Ongaro, the head
of the Buenos Aires print workers, as its new secretary general. There
was a clear majority of union leaders present who were critical of the in
ability of the previous authorities to resist the regime’s policies and who
advocated the adoption of a policy of outright resistance, in both politi
cal and union terms, to the government. Many of those unions which
had borne the brunt of the economic policy and had been intervened
were in the forefront of this move. Vandor and his allies withdrew from
this body, which took the name CGT Paseo Colon or CGT de los
Argentinos, and founded a rival central, the CGT Azopardo. While
opposing government policy the Vandorists advocated a cautious strat
egy aimed at recuperating union strength and remaining open to dia
logue with the government. The government refused to recognise
either body and encouraged the emergence of a tendency amongst the
union leaders which called for outright cooperation with the regime.
Known as participationists, or more formally as the Nueva Corriente
de Opinion, these leaders accepted the regime’s corporatist rhetoric
concerning the need for the unions to enter a close alliance with the
state.
While the ideological choices of individual union leaders played a
role in deciding in which grouping they aligned their unions, the exist
ence of these different currents essentially reflected different logical
responses to the new situation facing them after 1966. For those unions
which had been hardest hit by government economic policy and who
had been intervened by the state outright opposition held an initial
220 Workers and the ‘Revolution Argentina*, 1966-73
attraction. The traditional union policy of mobilisation and negotiation
had been proved untenable by the failure of the Plan of Struggle of
1967. With little left to lose in institutional terms outright opposition to
the regime seemed a logical choice for some unions. This option could
seek legitimation within Peronist political culture by posing as the em
bodiment of the traditional opposition to gorila military regimes. For
many smaller unions with a traditionally vulnerable position in the
labour market the option of seeking to carve a niche for themselves
within the new regime and achieve through state protection and collab
oration what they could not hope to do through bargaining seemed an
equally logical alternative once the traditional Vandorist strategy on
which they had relied became ineffective. This alliance with military
figures could, too, seek precedents in Peronist ideology and history. As
we saw in the last chapter an influential current of opinion had emerged
in the preceding years within the CGT espousing a neo-corporatist
strategy for the unions.
For the mainstream Peronist unions grouped around Vandor the
need for such drastic choices as these seemed unclear. Recent history
seemed to show that military regimes, sooner or later, had to come to
terms with the union movement. For this sector, therefore, the best
strategy seemed to be the traditional one of generally opposing govern
ment policy while keeping open lines of communication for eventual
compromises. In the short term this implied laying low and not pro
viding the regime with the pretext for further weakening union organis
ation. This pragmatic strategy was not inconsistent with the general
tone of working-class demobilisation which followed the failure of
attempts to resist the Ongama regime in its first nine months.
This weakened and divided labour movement was a vital precon
dition for the social peace achieved by the Ongama regime in the three
years following the June coup. As a guarantee of this social tranquillity
the regime streamlined and concentrated the repressive powers of the
state. For the labour movement the results of this were apparent: strikes
became struggles against the state and were, as such, to be dealt with by
the armed forces. In these conditions coherent national opposition to
the government’s labour policy was, therefore, almost non-existent.
Yet, Ongama’s pretensions went much further as he attempted to con
trol and suppress large areas of social and political life. Universities, for
example, and all educational issues came to be directly controlled by the
executive; universities were intervened and new courses of study dic
tated by the state. Police powers were greatly increased as the penal
code was reformed to facilitate the struggle against ‘subversion’. The
The Peronist union leaders under siege 221
police were also given judicial authority in some instances. The power
of the central state was expanded through the creation of a number of
conciliar bodies in charge of security and economic affairs which were
directly answerable to the executive power.4
While the success of the military in achieving labour tranquillity and
in suffocating social opposition was impressive in Ongania’s first three
years, beneath the surface a series of tensions had been generated. Many
social sectors were harmed by Krieger Vasena’s economic policy. Small
and medium businesses, regional entrepreneurs, rural landowners and
urban wage earners formed part of a wide spectrum who saw their pos
itions deteriorate, if not always in absolute terms, at least in relation to
the fortunes of the large industrial and financial interests in the modern
sector of the economy.5
The dissatisfaction of these economic groups was by 1969 allied to a
more generalised civil opposition to the authoritarianism of the Onga-
nia regime. Broad segments of Argentine society had been alienated by
the military’s suspension of the normal channels and institutions of
civil and political society. This democratic opposition was, like the
labour opposition, controlled in the first years of the new regime.
Indeed, the ideologists of the Revolucion Argentina had foreseen the
dissatisfaction and opposition which would be generated by the econ
omic plan and the dislocation of traditional social and political insti
tutions. Once the economy had been successfully, if painfully,
reconstructed in what they called the ‘economic time* they promised a
greater participation to these social and political sectors in future
‘social’ and ‘political* stages of the revolution. Such calm prognostica
tions of social and political manipulation were to be rudely shattered in
May 1969 as labour discontent and the tensions in civil society co
alesced in a wave of generalised social disobedience.
The scenario for this eruption was the major cities of the interior,
particularly Cordoba. In early May 1969 university students in Cor-
rientes. La Plata, Rosario and Cordoba clashed violently with the
police in a series of demonstrations. While the immediate issue was an
increase in the cost of meals, the universities had since the beginning of
the year been the centres of a growing opposition to Ongania’s govern
ment. In the May clashes local regional delegations of the CGT and
local unions declared their solidarity with the students. In Rosario the
clashes were so intense that the army declared the city a ‘war zone’ and
set up councils of war to try civilians. The impact of these events
nationally was immediate. Both CGTs declared a 24-hour protest
strike for 30 May to protest government repression and economic
222 Workers and the ‘Revolution Argentina\ 1966-73
policy. This was the first sign of national organised labour mobilisation
in more than two years.
In Cordoba these events provoked a particularly intense local echo.
To the student unrest, of evident importance in such a major university
centre, was added a peculiarly unpopular local governor imposed by
the central government and a local labour movement already mobilised
over specific grievances. The Cordoba labour movement had since
early 1969 been campaigning for the abolition of the ‘zonal discounts’
which authorised Cordoba employers to pay 11% lower wages than
their Buenos Aires counterparts. In May the national authorities also
abolished ‘English Saturday*, a custom by which Cordoba workers
were entitled to work a half-day on Saturday while being paid in full.
This custom had in effect made the Cordoba work week forty-four
hours in comparison with the national standard of forty-eight. O n 14
May automobile workers in the IKA-Renault plants, the major
employers in the city, resolved on a 48-hour protest strike. As they
were leaving the assembly they were violently attacked by the police,
provoking a 48-hour city-wide stoppage which expressed a wide spec
trum of grievances: opposition to the government’s wage policy, the
'zonal discounts’, the abolition of 'English Saturday’, and the intensifi
cation of production targets in the automobile plants. With a mobilised
union rank and file, and with growing popular discontent against the
local authorities the Cordoba unions called for a 48-hour general strike
to begin on 29 May, the day before the planned national strike.
O n the morning of the 29th students and police clashed in the princi
pal student area, the barrio Clinicas. As local striking workers became
involved, led by the transport workers and the Cordoba light and
power union, clashes spread to the entire central area and barricades
began to appear. At mid-day a column of more than 4,000 automobile
workers from the Renault plants on the outskirts of the city reached the
centre, cutting off the police forces there and forcing them to retreat.
By i p.m. workers and students controlled a 150-block area of the
centre of the city. In the afternoon the army began the operation to take
back the centre and by nightfall demonstrators had retreated to the
suburbs attacking local police stations and other symbols of authority.
In the meantime, snipers slowed the army’s movement through the
city. When the Cordobazo was finally over on Saturday 31st some 300
people were in military detention, perhaps thirty had been killed and at
least 500 had been wounded.6
In national terms the Cordobazo represented the beginning of the
end of the ‘Argentine Revolution’. First, and most immediately, it shat-
tered the illusion of the regime’s invincibility and broke the demoralis
ing calm and sense of civic impotence inculcated by three years of
military-imposed ‘peace’. The army’s reestablishment of order had been
achieved through the spectacle of directly confronting its own citizens
in the streets of the nation’s third largest city. The social cost of imple
menting Ongania’s policies was to be seen, increasingly, by the armed
forces command as excessive in terms of the opposition it generated.
Krieger Vasena and the entire national cabinet would resign almost im
mediately following the events. The Cordobazo also demonstrated the
rift between massive sectors of Argentine society and a state which was
increasingly isolated, arrogant and lacking in legitimacy. The dangers
of such a rift were symbolised by Cordoba’s devastated central area.
Perhaps most disquieting for the armed forces was the unpredictabil
ity, ferocity and uncontrolled nature of the upheaval. While the events
had formally occurred within the framework of calls by the labour
movement and opposition political parties the mobilisation had clearly
escaped the confines of normal channels of protest and opposition. The
experience of the following years was to further demonstrate the diffi
culty of channelling and institutionalising this mobilisation and pro
test. Faced with this situation the armed forces would in the 1969-73
period undertake a slowly accelerating search for a political solution
aimed at taming the unrest they had unleashed. The implications for the
union hierarchy of the Cordobazo were equally ominous. Taken by
surprise by the events, they had attempted to take advantage of the
upsurge in protest and the uncertainty of the regime to put themselves
at the head of the mobilisation and thus reestablish their credibility and
bargaining power with the authorities at a national level. Yet, the years
following the Cordobazo saw an intensification of the crisis of the
Peronist union leadership as their position was challenged by the
emergence of new actors and currents.
New actors: rebellion of the rank and file

The wave of working-class protest which began in 1969 and grew in the
following years was related to longer-term structural factors which had
been undermining the union hierarchy’s power and facilitating the
emergence of new opposition forces within the labour movement. The
centre of these new forces was the industries established by Frondizi,
principally vehicle production, steelmaking and petro-chemicals. Geo
graphically these industries were centred on Cordoba, the industrial
belt running along the Parana river south from Rosario, and the
224 Workers and the ‘Revolucion Argentina\ 1966-73
suburbs of Gran Buenos Aires. In the 196^-73 period militant protest
movements emerged primarily in Cordoba and the Parana industrial
belt. The emergence of workers in these new industrial sectors as im
portant challengers to both government and union leaders came as a
profound suprise to both.
For nearly a decade after their establishment, the labour force in the
new industries was quiescent, largely isolated from the turmoil of the
mainstream labour movement. This was the result of a variety of fac
tors. The companies, often multi-nationals, operating in these sectors
were able, and willing, to pay higher than average wages to assemble
and keep an adequately trained and docile labour force. There was also,
in general, far greater stability of employment in these sectors than in
the more traditional economy.7 In addition they adopted a labour
policy which provoked far-reaching changes in the structure of collec
tive bargaining in Argentina.
They insisted on, and won, first from Frondizi and later from Illia
two crucial innovations. First, they gained government permission in
certain cases to establish company unions (sindicatos por empresa) some
thing unheard of in the traditional Peronist union structure. Thus, for
example, the four Fiat plants established in Argentina, three of which
were in Cordoba and one in Buenos Aires, each had separate,
company-inspired unions.8 Similarly, the massive petro-chemical con
cern, PAS A, founded in 1958 in San Lorenzo, a northern suburb of
Rosario, set up its own plant union which was granted juridical bar
gaining status (personeria gremiat) by Frondizi. Where plant unions
were not considered to be feasible, as in the rest of the automobile
industry, union jurisdiction was granted to weaker, existing unions. In
automobiles, for example, the Sindicato de Mecanicos y Afines del
Transporte Automotor (SMATA), a small union made up largely of
garage mechanics, was granted organising rights over the claims of the
powerful metal workers* union, the Union Obrera Metalurgica
(UOM). This policy enabled the companies to isolate the new work
force from the national labour movement, and implement modern
labour relations strategies stressing company paternalism, social bene
fits and leisure facilities. This strategy seemed successful. The workers
in these industries played no part in the reestablishment of the CGT in
1963, nor in the factory occupations of the Plan de Lucha in 1964.
The other, related, innovation in labour policy was the insistence of
companies in these new sectors on company-level bargaining. An
increasing number of these plant contracts (convenios por empresa),
were authorised by a succession of Ministers of Labour in the 1958-66
period, undercutting the system of industry-wide national contracts

embodied in the Law of Professional Associations. Such contracts were
not restricted to the new, dynamic sector. The most modem companies
in the traditional industries, such as textiles, were insisting on them by
the early 1960s. Companies pressed for this change because it meant
that they could negotiate wages and conditions in accordance with their
individual productivity levels and production needs. Issues such as
payment systems and job classifications could be settled in accordance
with individual company needs, rather than be subject to industry
wide bargaining where a wide variety of political and institutional
pressures came to bear on the-final contracts. Moreover, the employers
reasoned that such decentralised bargaining would also inevitably frag
ment wage negotiations and hinder a unified worker response on wages
and conditions.
Decentralised collective bargaining certainly helped produce initially
a docile labour force in the dynamic sector of the Argentine economy.
It also weakened the power of the national union structure since it
moved the centre of wage bargaining in crucial areas of the economy
away from the national negotiations and back to the company level.
While in some industries such as textiles the national union still bar
gained for these local contracts, in the vast majority of the new in
dustrial sectors the traditional, mainly Peronist national unions were
unrepresented. The impact of this transformation of the bargaining
structure on the national union hierarchy was not unintended, either on
the part of the state or employers. Indeed, the Illia government re
sponded to the hostility of the Peronist unions by encouraging pre
cisely the trends we have been describing and launching a rigorous
programme of state overseeing of union affairs, designed to encourage
greater local union autonomy and weaken the hold of the hierarchy on
the union apparatus. Thus, the union leadership which was plunged
into crisis by the Ongania regime had already in the preceding years
seen its position in the collective bargaining system weakened and its
control of the union apparatus partially threatened.
Another, unintended, consequence of this policy became increas
ingly clear after 1969. The displacement of bargaining over wages and
conditions from the national to the company level helped revive local
sections and unions in those industries affected. Plant bargaining, in the
long run, strengthened the initiative and capacity of the rank and file to
act and pressure both employers and unions. The fact that conditions
and wages were determined at plant level provided a focus for rank-
and-file activity which was missing where such issues were determined
2 2 6 Workers and the 'Revolution Argentina\ 1966-7}
at national level and then simply transmitted to local units. It meant
that autoworkers, for example, could credibly hope to influence and
even determine issues of crucial importance to their working lives; their
own activity and choices could have an impact on their wages and con
ditions. As we have seen in an earlier section of this work, it was the
absence of such a concrete focus for rank-and-file involvement follow
ing the defeats of the Frondizi era which partly underlay the demobilis
ation of the rank and file in the Peronist unions for much of the 1960s.
The economic policy of Krieger Vasena helped, too, to break the
quiescence of the workers in these industries. Strict wage controls di
rectly affected the relatively privileged levels of their salaries. While
they remained above those in the more traditional industries, they lost
more heavily in comparison with lower-paid workers.9 At the same
time grievances over issues associated with modern production tech
nology also came to the fore, as companies increased production speeds
and introduced rationalisation schemes. All of these factors coalesced in
the period following the Cordobazo and laid the basis for rank-and-file
movements which challenged first their own employers and unions,
then the national union apparatus and, finally, the military regime
itself.
In 1970 over 5,000 Fiat Cordoba workers overthrew the compliant
leaders of their company unions and elected new radical leaderships. In
the same year, too, the workers in PASA rebelled against their com
pany-appointed leaders and elected rank-and-file delegates to control
their union. In the largest union in the modem sector, SMATA, which
had over 30,000 members by 1970, the national leadership had been
under increasing pressure since before the Cordobazo, Rank-and-file
opposition delegates were in control in many of the major companies
such as Chrysler, Peugeot and Citroën. In 1972 opposition militants
won control of the Cordoba branch, representing some 7,000 IKA-
Renault workers. Many other workers in the modern sector followed
suit in these years.
The ability of the rank-and-file opposition to successfully challenge
the existing leaderships was facilitated by the particular nature of these
unions in terms of the internal control they could exercise over their
members. While the labour policy of companies in the dynamic sector
ensured that their workforce would remain largely isolated from the
traditional national unions, it also meant that when the period of docil
ity was shattered these companies were left with unions which had great
difficulty in controlling a rebellious rank and file, since they did not
have at their disposal the sort of apparatus of internal control which
existed in traditional Peronist unions such as the UOM, construction

and textile unions.
This was evidently the case with company unions like those in Fiat.
Here again, company policy established in the late 1950s backfired in
the post-1969 period. The elimination of the national unions, and the
restricted scope of company unions, proved a great advantage to the
rank-and-file opposition. It was clearly easier to challenge a union
leadership which was restricted to one enterprise, and which did not
have a strong apparatus of internal control, than it was to take on the
might of a national union hierarchy like that of the UOM. Even in
national unions like SMAT A, there did not exist the sort of long estab
lished internal ‘machinery* of control characteristic of the older in
dustrial unions. They were effectively newcomers who had only
succeeded in establishing their presence in the mid 1960s. The generally
harmonious labour relations in the modem sector had made the con
struction of such a maquina unnecessary. Moreover, workers in both
company unions and in those branches of national unions which rebel
led against their national leaders, like SMATA and the light and power
union in Cordoba, were aided by provisions in labour law which gran
ted them control of their own finances and considerable organisational
autonomy. National unions like SMATA and the light and power union
corresponded to the federative structure rather than the highly concen
trated union structure characteristic of unions in traditional industries
such as metal working and textiles. As such, their ability to curb frac
tious local branches was severely restricted.
The labour opposition which flourished after 1969 remained essen
tially confined to the interior of the country. In Buenos Aires itself the
labour movement in both the modern and traditional sectors remained,
prior to 1973, largely outside the upheaval of the interior. This can be
explained, in part, by factors alluded to above. In Buenos Aires the tra
ditional mechanisms of repression and cooption remained largely
intact; the opportunities for asserting local organisational autonomy
were far less. The very size and extent of the metropolitan industrial
belt gave the union bureaucracy greater room for manoeuvring and ato
mising working-class opposition. This in turn was related to what one
author has described as a radically different labour climate in the
interior.10 In the urban settings of the interior where the new industries
were installed, the social conflict generated by factory life was pro
longed outside the factory and reinforced by forms of social and spatial
segregation. Social opposition emerging from these modern industries
was not obfuscated by the wider urban setting but rather made more
2 2 8 Workers and the 'Revolution Argentina\ 1966-73
transparent. A close physical proximity between place of work and
place of abode - particularly in many of the single-industry towns of
the interior - also helped reinforce the internal solidarity of working-
class communities.
In Buenos Aires the factory simply did not have a comparable
centrality, but was part of a huge urban structure in which social con
trasts, and solidarities, formed at the workplace were diluted. This was
clearly reflected in a lower level of community solidarity available to
particular working-class mobilisations. Grievances and collective con
sciousness formed at the point of production were diluted within the
urban conglomeration of the metropolis. This meant that while the
emerging opposition forces could find an echo in Buenos Aires, they
were unable to successfully challenge either employers or their union
leaders in the sort of generalised community protest of the interior. In
the automobile industry, for example, opposition groupings were pres
ent in the plants of Buenos Aires and led many strikes. They were not,
however, able to successfully challenge employers or their unions in the
way that Renault or Fiat workers in Cordoba were able to do.11
Clasismo and sindicalismo de liberation : the meaning and limits of

the new union opposition
The militancy which swept the cities of the interior in the years follow
ing 1969 helped to destabilise both governments and established union
leaderships. The centre of this militancy remained in Cordoba, though
its ramifications spread far beyond. In Cordoba the vanguard of this
movement lay in the light and power workers’ union led by Agustm
Tosco, the two largest Fiat plant unions Sitrac and Sitram, and the
IKA-Renault plant.12 The activities of these workers had, however, a
city-wide impact, and their influence spread to other workers in the
interior who engaged in similar actions.
One of the distinguishing features of this militancy was its frequent
recourse to direct action and the adoption of other non-conventional
tactics of labour mobilisation. Active strikes, paros activos, became the
most common form of labour activity in Cordoba. In the course of
1971 some twelve active strikes were launched by the Cordoba CGT.
Conflicts also often involved plant occupations and the taking of man
agement hostages. An active strike implied a conscious policy of break
ing with the passivity associated with traditional labour protest. It
implied, for example, an attempt to involve the workforce on a daily
basis in demonstrations aimed at taking the conflict to the wider com-
The Peronist union leaders under siege 229
munity. The culmination of such forms of activity came in March 1971

in a second city-wide upheaval in Cordoba, known as the Viborazo.13
While the forms of labour activity adopted by these workers rep
resented a radical departure from more traditional labour practices, the
most important characteristic of this wave of militancy was its anti-
bureaucratic nature: Above all, it defined itself in terms of its oppo
sition to existing models of union leadership and forms of internal
government. Indeed, as we have seen, the origins of many of these
movements lay in just such a questioning of existing leaderships. The
typical scenario for their emergence involved an initial challenge to
managerial policy, usually, involving issues of labour conditions, which
then rapidly expanded to a questioning of existing leaders who were
perceived as being too closely identified with the companies. O ut of
this experience came a more general attack on the hurocracia sindical. A
bureaucrat was, in Agustin Tosco*s words: ‘someone without vo
cation, without ideals, who converts himself into a typical “ adminis
trator” of a union post, who uses it for his personal satisfaction and
from his position starts to “ rule” over his comrades’.14
In contrast, the new militants offered ‘honest leadership’. This
implied personal probity and a commitment to internal democracy on
the part of the new militant leaderships. The importance of these issues
for workers, and the support they offered militants who were sensitive
to them, was clearly articulated by an electrical supply worker in
Cordoba, speaking of his support for Agustin Tosco:
The union sees that its money is turned into social works, that Tosco doesn’t
put his hand in the till, doesn’t take any for himself and people feel safe because
the leaders keep their promises, not like in other unions where they betray
strikes and sell out to the bosses, and live in luxury like potentates, with a
house in the mountains, fast cars, women... Here they consult the union in
assemblies and there are no thugs like in the UOM, where they throw you out
if you oppose them.15
The issue of ‘honest leadership’ became a constantly reiterated theme
of the labour protest of these years and helped give the protest its anti-
bureaucratic nature. Neither the theme nor the target were new in the
Argentine labour movement. As we have described, it emerged during
the Resistance period and had gone on to become a part of the Peronist
left’s critique of Vandorism. Yet, never before had it been an issue of
such central importance, so clearly and concretely posed. ‘Honest
leadership’ implied, above all, democracy and responsiveness to the
rank and file’s needs. A deliberate policy was adopted by the militants
of preventing the formation of professional bureaucracies in the tra-
ditional Peronist style. Emphasis was placed on the need for the leader
ship to have worked its way up from below. In the elections which
overthrew the existing leadership of SMATA Cordoba, in March 1972,
for example, thirty of forty-five candidates were shop-floor dele
gates.16 A common policy of these leaderships was membership rota
tion. Periodically in SMATA Cordoba, for example, the leaders would
return to their trades in the plants and other militants would take their
place.17
Constant consultation with the membership was also emphasised
and steps taken to limit the executive autonomy of leadership bodies.
Much of this responsiveness to the issue of internal democracy may
well have been generational. Many of these militants were young with
little of an older generation of militants* experience of the demoralising
impact of bureaucratic power. The average age of the SMATA Cord
oba leaders elected in 1972 was thirty, and most of the formative experi
ence of this new generation had come in the period after 1966.18
The issues which formed the centre of union activity and concern
were also distinctive. The new leaderships in the modem sector
industries directed much of their energy toward the quality of working
life inside the plants. This was a concern which directly challenged
rationalisation schemes aimed at intensifying production and
questioned management prerogatives and authority within the labour
process. Line speed ups had constantly fuelled the emerging discontent
of the IKA-Renault workers in the late 1960s, and managerial insist
ence on its right to unilaterally determine production speeds had been a
major issue leading to the revolt of Fiat workers in 1970. Once they had
established their control the new militants set about confronting
companies on these issues. In their negotiations with Fiat in July 1971,
for example, Sitrac and Sitram demanded the abolition of the com
pany’s incentive scheme, arguing that it enabled the company to pay
low basic wages and to increase exploitation by constantly increasing
production targets and line speeds. Bonuses, they argued, should be in
corporated into basic wage rates and increased production should be
derived from new technology, not from intensified effort. They also
suggested a reduction of job categories in order to create a more united
work force, and demanded worker participation in fixing production
targets.19
The resurgence of issues concerned with labour conditions and
managerial authority in this new wave of labour protest represented the
first time in nearly a decade that such issues had been raised within the
labour movement. We have documented in an earlier chapter the way in
which the defeats of the Frondizi era had rolled back a wide spectrum of
shop-floor gains in this field. As the internal commissions were weak
ened in the 1960s, and with an official union leadership economically
on the defensive and concerned to protect wages above all else, the issue
of labour conditions had effectively vanished from the agenda of the
national union movement and the shop floor. The impact of this newly
rediscovered concern amongst the labour opposition of the late 1960s
and early 1970s should not be underestimated. When coupled with the
emphasis on internal democracy it helped define, in concrete terms, the
wider significance of the militant upsurge of these years. A Fiat worker
from the Materfer plant in Cordoba was quite explicit about the sig
nificance of this experience:
Those fifteen months of union democracy left an enormous legacy for Fiat
workers ... we showed what we could do to better our working conditions
when we organise and the leaderships that we elect authentically carry out the
mandate of the rank and file ... We got wage increases, upgrading of cat
egories, improvements in the canteen, in medical attention, we stopped arbi
trary firings. But more important than all this was the total change in life in the
plants. Delegates defended us from foremen in all problems which arose at
work. We controlled production speeds which had previously been terrible.
We eliminated the oppressive climate which had existed within the factory and
we could claim our rights as human beings.20
In a more general sense, the leaderships which came to the fore in the
modern sector in the 1969-73 period also sought to frame their labour
protest in terms of wider, ideological concerns. Clasismo, sindicalismo
de liheraciôn, as it was variously called, implied, at the level of leader
ship ideology, an identification of the working-class movement with
the suppression of capitalism and the creation of a socialist society. The
programme of Sitrac and Sitram, issued in May 1971, proposed massive
nationalisation of production and workers’ control of industry. This
evidently entailed a broad definition of the function of trade unionism.
Agustin Tosco consistently rejected a purely economic definition of
union action:
The trade unionist must struggle with all his conviction, all his efforts to change
the system ... the union leader must know that in spite of a ‘good economy*, if
there is no just distribution of wealth, exploitation continues. And he must,
therefore, struggle for ‘social liberation*. He must also know that there will
never be good labour contracts with the country’s economy dominated by the
monopolies. And therefore they must struggle for national liberation.21
A leader of Sitrac-Sitram asserted that The supporters of a clasista

union orientation are perfectly aware of the natural incompatibility be-
232 Workers and the 'Revolution Argentina\ 1966-7j
tween their own class interests and those of the dominant classes*.22
One of the principal functions of a union was precisely to inculcate
such convictions amongst its rank and file. The union thus had a vital
consciousness-raising task to prepare the working class for what would
ultimately be a political battle against employers and the state.
Clasismo evidently carried potentially profound implications for the
Peronist union bureaucracy, Argentine employers and, ultimately, the
state. For the national union hierarchy its fiercely anti-bureaucratic em
phasis on internal democracy and mass participation posed a clear
threat in terms of influence and example. It presented workers confron
ted with the spectacle of a traditional union leadership in crisis with a
viable alternative model of union action. For employers, the new union
opposition’s championing of issues centred on labour conditions rep
resented a direct challenge to authority relations inside the factories.
For both unions and employers, clasismo*s recognition of the irrecon
cilable nature of class interests implied a constant battle between the
two, and the denial of the common ground for compromise so essential
for both traditional trade unionism and employers. The threat posed to
the military regime was also clear. The movement had repeatedly dem
onstrated its capacity to challenge public order well beyond the factory
gates. Its capacity to articulate a wide spectrum of social and political
grievances, its claims to redefine the role of unionism and its ability to
adopt radical forms of activity, presented a consistent threat to political
stability which the Argentine state could ill afford to ignore.
Yet, it became equally clear that this opposition movement had limi
tations and internal contradictions. Certainly, its failure to become a
true national force and expand its influence to Buenos Aires proved to
be a considerable weakness. The weight of state repression was import
ant, too. In October 1971, for example, the national government dis
solved the Sitrac-Sitram unions and imprisoned their leaders. Many
other militants also suffered the effects of government and managerial
repression as the state moved to contain and isolate the movement. The
state’s relative success in achieving this after 1971 was aided by weak
nesses within the opposition movement.
Most crucially, the political project associated with clasismo, the
broader claims of the militant leaderships concerning the ultimate goal
of the anti-bureaucratic movement, were not necessarily completely
shared by their rank and file. For the majority of the rank and file the
basic feature of the new movement was not the theory of sindicalismo
de liberation, nor the goal of a socialist society, but rather union com-
bativity and ‘honest leadership* which translated into meaningful
changes in their working lives. A militant from the Chrysler plant in

Buenos Aires was quite frank when discussing this issue:
They're with whoever defends them; in Chrysler the rank and file knew our
political line ... for them it mattered little if we are guerrilleros or commu
nists, what was important was that we defended them, and so they defended us
... the rank and file don't respond to an ideology, they respond to honest
leadership, nothing else.23
The crisis of both the military regime and the union leadership fol
lowing the Cordobazo, together with the radicalisation of the rank and
file, particularly in the interior, provided a space into which radical pol
itical activists could move and achieve an influence among important
sectors of the working class they had been denied for thirty years.
Maoists, revolutionary Peronists, communists and a variety of new left
Marxist groups achieved a considerable influence in the union oppo
sition movement of the 1969-73 period. Many of the leaderships which
emerged were a coalition of leftist tendencies who saw, apparently for
the first time in Argentina, the emergence of a new proletariat not
dominated and manipulated by Peronism and its union bureaucracy.
The rank-and-file rebellion of the interior seemed to herald the arrival
of a proletarian vanguard capable of launching both an economic and
political assault on capitalism.
The specific national conjuncture of the post-Cordobazo period cer
tainly gave ground for such hopes. These times were heady ones indeed
for radical activists. The capacity of the working class to challenge and
undermine the regime seemed self-evident. The Cordobazo had re
moved Ongania from power; the Viborazo had likewise been the death
knell for his successor, Levingston. At the same time the military
regime and the broad opposition it had generated had radically simpli
fied political and social activity. Opposition to the military was wide
spread and broad based, and subsumed within it a wide range of
political tendencies. Within the working class, opposition to the
regime’s economic policy and crude repression seemed a sufficient
strategy, and those who most consistently and courageously carried
this through established a credibility and were granted a broad-based
support which was largely independent of a commitment to the details
of their radical political ideology. In the situation created by the
regime’s policies the line between union and political activity and loy
alty, always blurred in Argentina, disappeared as the new union oppo
sition expressed the generalised rejection by their rank and file of the
Revolution Argentina.
234 Workers and the 'Revolution Argentina ’ , 1966-7}
This is not to suggest that Marxist activists foisted their political con
cerns on an unwilling membership. The labour protest of this era had
its origins in authentic rank-and-file mobilisations, and was not the
work of external agitators as the regime and union leadership main
tained. Radical leftist groups helped provide links between plant agi
tation and the wider community. In addition, they provided many of
the new working-class activists thrown up by this mobilisation with a
broader political identity at a time when many of them were seeking an
alternative to both simple union militancy and an increasingly defensive
traditional Peronism. Militants such as René Salamanca, the leader of
SMATA Cordoba and Carlos Masera, a leading figure in Sitrac-
Sitram, adopted an explicit Marxist identity both because of the practi
cal help offered by radical groups inside the plants and because they
offered them a broader vision of social change and regeneration. Such a
vision had until then been a monopoly of Peronism and one of das-
ismo's enduring legacies was to have at least partially broadened the
spectrum of political ideologies available in working-class discourse.
The point which must be emphasised, however, is that this was only
a partial breach in Peronism’s monopoly. The political loyalties of
workers in these unions remained overwhelmingly Peronist and, while
this working-class Peronism remained open to a variety of new inputs
and counter-discourses, in the most immediate political sense their sup
port for the new leaderships was not based on political identification. A
militant from the light and power union in Cordoba explained the
union’s support for Tosco, a non-Peronist, in these terms: ‘The ma
jority of the union is Peronist, but they voted for Tosco as a union
leader. We’ve known him for fifteen years, he’s honest, capable and has
proved himself in struggles against the bosses.*24
This implied that the strategy adopted by the militant opposition was
a precarious one. They were able to mobilise their membership and
adopt a political role which challenged the regime and advocated a
socialist revolution. Yet, this mobilisation was based largely on a loy
alty toward the combativity and honesty of the leaders rather than on
specifically ideological factors. The consciousness-raising function of
the union was, in these circumstances, of very limited success. For most
of this period the discrepancy between the political pretensions of the
militant leadership and the political loyalties of the rank and file
remained muted. But, as the regime began, after 1971, under the leader
ship of General Lanusse, to moderate its policies and prepare the return
of traditional political activity, the potential conflict became more
apparent. The reemergence of a credible political option for the work-
ing class embodied in a resurgent political Peronism and the possible

return of Perön himself clearly exposed the limits of political radicalis
ation.
Some currents within the union opposition were aware of the weak
ness of their position. Tosco in the light and power workers* union was
constantly aware of the problem and lamented the rank and file’s
apathy toward the broader, revolutionary concerns. He was also aware
of the need to avoid offending the Peronist predisposition of many in
his union. However, a majority of the new wave of militants took the
reality of labour protest and social conflict and made the leap of faith
that this would inevitably-be translated into a. revolutionary political
maturing of the working class. Drawing from the Cordobazo its legacy
of elemental social upheaval, they glorified the spontaneity and explos
ive potential of the masses. In this way they intended to resolve the di
lemma of the gap between their revolutionary ideology and the actual
political state of the working class.
Such a strategy inevitably isolated the new wave of militants. This
was particularly evident in their relationship with Peronist activists
who were by 1971 following Perön*s orders to unify the movement
behind the union leadership, and thus prevent internal divisions which
would hinder his negotiations with the regime. This meant that the mil
itant unity in action which had been characteristic of the preceding
years became more difficult to achieve. The failure of the clasista mili
tants to formalise such a unity at the Plenario Nacional de Sindicatos
Combativos, Grupos Clasistas, Obreros Revolutionaries, held in
August 1971, amply reflected this, as did the lack of response to the
crushing of Sitrac-Sitram in October of the same year. Yet, as the
working class looked increasingly by 1971 to the electoral return of
Peronism as a solution to their problems, the radical opposition
launched their slogan ‘N i golpe, ni elecciön: revolucion!*25
The continuing crisis of the union leaders: from Cordobazo to the

retu rn of Perön
The period from 1969 to 1973 saw the gradual dismantling of the Revol
ution Argentina, culminating in the return of Peronism to political
power in the elections of March 1973. In the years following the Cordo
bazo the armed forces* high command tried with varying degrees of suc
cess to put the lid back on the Pandora’s box of social and political
upheaval that had been opened by the Cordoba events. The first casu
alty of this policy was Ongania himself who, unwilling to make the
2 3 6 Workers and the 'Revolution Argentina \ 1966-73
necessary compromises, was ousted in June 1970. Under his successor
General Levingston some first steps were taken toward a return to insti
tutional normality. In July 1970 the CGT was normalised under newly
elected authorities. Levingston, however, balked at further significant
concessions to the social and political opposition. The isolation of his
government became more apparent as popular discontent continued,
accompanied by an increasingly daring series of guerrilla actions. In
March 1971 a second city-wide upheaval shook Cordoba. Provoked
by an unpopular, military-appointed governor, this second Cordohazo
involved the same ad hoc alliance between workers, students and wide
sectors of the local population. To this was now added, however, a
leadership role for the radical Sitrac-Sitram unions and a widely re
ported intervention of guerrilla groups. The Viborazo galvanised the
high command. By the end of March Levingston had been summarily
dismissed and replaced by the head of the Junta de Comandantes, Gen
eral Alejandro Lanusse.
Alarmed by what they regarded as the growing threat of social disin
tegration and chaos, worried by the demoralising impact of the increas
ing use of the armed forces to police the nation’s citizenry, the military
commanders considered it imperative to dismantle, in a controlled
fashion, the most provocative aspects of the Revolution Argentina and
prepare the ground for an orderly transition to civilian rule. The Gran
Acuerdo National, launched by Lanusse, encapsulated this military
strategy. It proposed the reestablishment of the traditional institutions
of civic and political life in order to defuse the social upheaval inundat
ing Argentina, and channel it into acceptable paths. In July 1971 the
proscription of political parties decreed by Ongania in 1966 was lifted
and elections promised. Discussions between the major political forces
and the leaders of the armed forces began in earnest, to establish the
basis for the proposed national consensus. Clearly, this would have to
involve a recognition of Peronism as a political force. Lanusse and the
high command realised that any attempt to institutionalise and head off
the popular discontent they had unleashed would be doomed to failure
without the at least tacit support of Peronism. In a significant break
with the traditional anti-Peronism of the armed forces, Lanusse began
talks with Peronist figures. Hints were even dropped about the possible
return of Perön himself. At the same time, Lanusse continued a policy,
begun under Levingston, of dismantling many of those aspects of Krie
ger Vasena’s economic policy which had so offended important entre
preneurial sectors.
The concrete political solution originally envisaged by the military as
emerging from the Gran Acuerdo Nacional involved the electoral legiti
mation of a military-backed candidate, Lanusse himself, in the elec
tions promised for 1973. Such a candidate would be accepted by
Peronists and Radicals, they reasoned, as a necessary cost of the tran
sition to democracy. Their support for such a solution would evidently
have to be won in return for programmatic concessions and political
guarantees. The social basis of this solution was to be furnished
through the support of the Peronist unions. The union leadership
would be attracted by the offer of a close relationship with a sympath
etic military figure. After the trauma of the Ongania regime, and under
continued attack from new opposition forces, the unions would wel
come the opportunity afforded by a state which had courted their sup
port to reestablish their control and their credibility as a major factor of
power in Argentina. These populist aspirations of Lanusse were to be
buttressed by a determined effort to expand the government’s popular
support through social welfare measures. At the same time as this mod
erate path was to be followed, a policy of repression was to be directed
at all Subversive’ forces, whether radical unionists or guerrilla mili
tants.
Lanusse’s strategy was partially successful. The reconvening of pol
itical parties and the reopening of the political option, which culmi
nated in the 1973 elections, managed to contain the radical opposition
within the unions. A recurrence of the Viborazo was avoided. Never
theless, the final terms of the political solution which emerged in the
course of 1972 differed dramatically from that originally envisaged by
the strategists of the Gran Acuerdo Nacional and represented an at least
partial defeat for their plans.
Several factors undermined the success of Lanusse’s plan. On the one
hand, Perön himself astutely countered one of its principal goals: the
political incorporation of Peronism into the new institutional opening
which would, at the same time, reduce Peron’s own authority and limit
his role in the emerging consensus. He was able to take advantage of the
new context to reestablish his own preeminence. Refusing to commit
himself to the military’s scheme he kept his lines of communication
open to other political forces. Through the coalition called the Hora del
Pueblo he maintained contact with the Radical Party and a wide range
of democratic forces advocating a direct return to electoral democracy.
By March 1972 Peronism had established its own electoral front, the
Frente Justicialista de Liberaciön (FREJULI), and affirmed its inten
tion to contest the elections in its own right. Peron’s success in as
serting his preeminence was a logical consequence of Lanusse’s
reopening of party politics. Perön, as the ultimate arbiter of Peronist
votes, inevitably became more powerful as other political actors bar
gained for his support and these votes in the upcoming elections.
Perön’s ability to outmanoeuvre Lanusse was also due to the social
and civic crisis which continued to rend Argentine society. While the
regime had some success after 1971 in repressing and controlling the
labour rebellion in the interior, and while the prospect of elections in
1973 helped assuage the democratic yearnings of large sectors of Argen
tine society, the mobilisation of important segments of the urban
middle class, particularly its youth, continued unabated. Children of
Ongania’s insensitive and ruthless authoritarianism, their rebellion
had first erupted in 1969 and continued in the following years in a
society which seemed to offer them diminishing economic oppor
tunities. Its scope came to extend far beyond the initial grievances of its
university environment. These middle-class youths adopted a radical
anti-imperialist ideology and many turned increasingly toward Peron-
ism or the guerrilla groups as a channel for their aspirations. This
youthful rebellion was clearly not readily assimilable within the reborn
system of traditional political parties.
This was most dramatically symbolised by the ever-increasing inten
sity of guerrilla actions. By 1970 there were four major guerrilla groups
operating in Argentina: the Fuerzas Armadas Peronistas, the Fuerzas
Armadas Revolucionarias, the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo,
and the Montoneros. Between 1970 and 1973 these groups, and a
number of smaller imitators, embarked on a wave of actions which in
cluded direct attacks on military installations, the kidnapping and kill
ing of industrialists and political figures, spectacular bank robberies
and hijackings, and the assassination of leading military figures.26 Such
actions found an often explicit support among the youth who were
flooding into the Peronist movement at this time. The threat that this
challenge posed to political and social stability gradually changed the
terms of the negotiations between Perön and the military. By 1972
Perön and Peronism were seen by many in the armed forces as the only
viable hope to reestablish social order and control the threat posed by a
radicalised youth and radicalised labour protest. A city-wide upheaval
in Mendoza in February 1972, which was very similar in its form to the
Cordobazo, convinced the military that they had far more to lose from
a continued delay in reaching a political solution than did Perön. Once
Perön had accepted, by the end of 1972, the military’s one remaining
stipulation - a proscription on his own personal candidature - the way
was cleared for the return of Peronism to political power.
Ultimately, too, the regime’s assumption that it would be able to

enrol a significant proportion of the union leadership as a partner
within a revived military reformism proved to be overly optimistic.
The crisis provoked by the Ongania regime could not be overcome by
government fiat. As was the case with the political parties, the simple
act of resurrecting the union movement could not undo the damage
done to its credibility and morale. Would the union leadership be able
to direct and channel a social protest which had arisen outside its con
trol and independent of its wishes? The more moderate government
economic policy adopted by Ongania’s successors, together with the
return of some sort of limited collective bargaining, did hold the pros
pect of a certain rehabilitation for the union leadership. They were not,
however, able to win sufficient concessions from the regime to win
back all the lost ground. While the economic policy under Lanusse
introduced sufficient flexibility in wage policy to prevent explosive
unrest, the authorities were not willing to reintroduce unrestricted col
lective bargaining, and thus give the union leaders the tools with which
to reassert their unquestioned hegemony over their rank and file and
embark their unions on the path toward compromise and alliance envis
ioned in the Gran Acuerdo NacionaL This implied that although the
Peronist union leadership had the capacity to maintain its control of the
national union apparatus centred in Buenos'Aires it no longer enjoyed
in these years the ability to mobilise and lead its members in the
impressive fashion it once had during the apogee of Vandorism.
Most importantly for the calculations of the military strategists, the
union hierarchy’s position within Peronism was an increasingly belea-
gured one. This threat to their position came from two sources. First, it
was a consequence of the rehabilitation of the political system and tra
ditional political actors. The reestablishment of traditional political ac
tivity deeply disturbed and divided many Peronist union leaders. Even
under as astute a tactician as Vandor we have seen how ambiguous were
the results of union incursions into the political arena in the mid 1960s.
With Vandor’s murder, and the increasing uncertainties of the early
1970s, union prospects within a restored democratic politics looked
murky at best. The union hierarchy was aware that any political open
ing would tend to strengthen Perön’s position and weaken its own, and
this was especially true in a context which promised the formal legalis
ation of political Peronism, and even the possible return of Perön. The
union leaders were also aware of the distrust and resentment felt by
Perön and his entourage toward themselves.
While many of the Peronist leaders were, therefore, concerned by
2 4 0 Workers and the 'Revolution Argentina*, J 9 6 6 - 7 J
Peron’s tactical manoeuvres, they were, in their weakened circum

stances, unable to adopt a unified response. One faction, headed by the
secretary general of the CGT, José Rucci, adopted a policy of complete
compliance with Peron’s political tactics, openly subordinating the
CGT to his bargaining needs with the regime and political parties. In
July 1971, however, a group of some sixty Peronist unions, many of
which had formerly been within the ‘participationist* current, issued a
public statement denouncing traditional political parties, attacking the
growing political activity of the CGT, and calling for a ‘revolution
within the revolution* to return the Revolution Argentina to its true,
corporatist path. Most union leaders considered such a barely disguised
attack on Peron's tactics to be unwise, particularly as they saw the
inexorable move toward elections in the course of 1972. Their chief
concern became their ability to assert their claims to their share of the
spoils offered by the political resurgence of Peronism.
The fact that the union leadership was so pessimistic about its pros
pects within a revitalised Peronism reflected its concern over the grow
ing influence of new forces within the movement. Increasingly it felt
isolated and under attack from an emerging leftist current within
Peronism. This left differed considerably from the traditional union left
of the early 1960s. The traditional union durosy now enrolled in Peron-
ismo Combativo, were still a critical force within the CGT and the
councils of the 62 Organisations. They were, however, limited in their
influence to a number of small unions. The CGT de los Argentinos,
which had briefly seemed to promise a real influence for this tradition
had by 1969 disappeared as an effective force. Revolutionary Peronism
centred on organisations such as Peronismo de Base, achieved a con
siderable influence among rank-and-file workers, particularly in the
interior in the years after 1969. They were active within the new union
opposition movements and adopted similar positions to other clasista
currents. Their influence, too, was a limited one within Peronism and
the national unions.
O f far greater concern to the union leaders were the Peronist youth
and guerrilla groups, in particular the Montoneros. The threat they
posed was both physical and political. Starting with the assassination of
Augusto Vandor in July 1969, and continuing with the murder of José
Alonso a year later, the Peronist guerrillas began a campaign of selective
physical elimination of union leaders. As they flocked into the youth
organisations of Peronism, and to a lesser degree the guerrilla groups,
in the years following the Cordobazoy the young, mainly middle-class
recruits espoused a radical anti-imperialism which drew on a wide
range of third-world nationalist figures for inspiration. Identifying

Peronism as a national liberation movement, they declared its goal to be
the establishment of a national form of socialism. The strategy which
would lead to this goal was that of armed struggle. They proclaimed the
main obstacle to Peronism's pursuit of this goal to be the union bureau
cracy. The bureaucracy was, for these newcomers, a corrupt caste whose
function was to repress and manipulate the Peronist masses, and divert
them from the struggle for the creation of a new Argentina. As such it
was objectively an ally of the oligarchy and imperialism, which would
either be physically eliminated from Peronism, or surpassed by the
entry into the movement of mew revolutionary blood which would
mature into the future leadership.
The threat posed by these sectors to the union bureaucracy was not,
therefore, simply a physical one. It was above all ideological and politi
cal. At no time in the years 1969-73 did they pose an institutional threat
to the leadership within the unions, as, for example, the labour insur
gents of the interior potentially did. Indeed, they made no attempt to
create a specifically working-class organisation to compete within the
unions. The working class was assumed to be, per se, revolutionary,
and once the bureaucracy had been removed it would reestablish its
true relationship with the revolutionary leader, Peron, and the new
revolutionary leadership of Peronism. The Peronist youth and guerrilla
groups represented above all a challenge to the entire trajectory of the
union movement within Peronism and, indeed, the identity they held
of Peronism as a movement. The reformist nationalism they had ident
ified with Peronism, and the pragmatism and compromise that had
come to imply after 1955» were now assailed in terms of a moral crusade
launched by newcomers with no traditional standing within the move
ment. These new arrivals now sought to redefine Peronism in terms of a
revolutionary creed which could have little meaning for the union
leaders. A fundamental part of this redefinition involved, moreover,
the denial of the legitimacy of the union leadership's very presence
within the new Peronist movement envisaged by the young radicals.
In calmer times such threats to their traditional standing within
Peronism from outside the unions could have been dismissed. In the
years of mass mobilisation and heightened social conflict, with the
attendant influx of radicalised sectors into Peronism, such threats had
to be taken seriously. The reopening of the political system clearly
made the union leadership far more vulnerable to political attack from
outside the strictly union field. N or did Peron assuage these fears. He
perceived that the youth sectors of the movement clearly reflected a
prevalent popular mood of resentment and hope for renewal in Argen
tine society far more authentically than could an insecure union leader
ship. They were capable of organising the popular mobilisation made
possible by the reemergence of mass politics. They were, in addition,
an important bargaining tool for him; a reminder of Peronism*s ca
pacity to destabilise if it were not reintegrated into Argentine society.
Throughout 1972 Perön entertained leaders of the Peronist youth in
Madrid, and praise for the muchachos and criticism of the union
bureaucracy were frequently found in his public comments. The Mon-
toneros were granted recognition as ‘special formations* of the move
ment. Taking Peron’s assurances that the youth would inherit the
movement at face value, the leaders of the Juventud Peronista and the
Montoneros chose to ignore potential differences between their strat
egy and that of Perön. Given the generalised euphoria which engulfed
the movement as the election campaign got under way, the indications
which already existed of the commitments and compromises Perön
was prepared to embark upon were interpreted as masterly tactical
ruses on the part of the veteran leader. For the union leaders the fright
ening influence of the new pretenders seemed palpable enough. As
FREJULI chose its candidates in early 1972 the union leadership was
reminded of its reduced weight within the movement. In contrast to
1962 and 1965 where they had imposed their candidates at will, they
were now forced to accept an equal proportion of candidacies with
other sections of Peronism. N ot a single ticket for a provincial governor
was offered to a union figure; the most they achieved was the vice-
gubernatorial nomination in some provinces. N or were they consulted
over Peron’s choice of Hector Campora as the Peronist presidential
candidate. Perhaps most ominously, the entire tone and organisation of
the election campaign were set by the youth sectors who succeeded in
mobilising vast sectors of the population and in targeting both the mili
tary regime and the union bureaucracy for special execration. Thus, the
results of the 11 March elections which gave Peronism a clear and
impressive victory were regarded with little enthusiasm by the union
leaders. After eighteen years of formal commitment to Peronism’s
regaining of state power, the reality which confronted them when
Campora was inaugurated as president on 25 May offered little ground
for optimism and security.
O n 3 October 1973 Juan Perön stood on the balcony of the C G T head

quarters in downtown Buenos Aires. He was surrounded by the elite of
the Peronist union leadership; Lorenzo Miguel, Adelino Romero, Cas-
ildo Herreras were all present. From mid-day onward, and for most of
the afternoon, Perön waved his greetings to a seemingly endless pro
cession of workers, bused in by their unions for the occasion, as they
marched passed chanting his name and singing Peronist anthems such
as the Muchachos Peronistas. As the afternoon wore on a growing cre
scendo of noise percolated through from the adjacent area and began to
drown out the traditional anthems broadcast on the official loud
speaker system. The source of the noise soon became apparent as ob
servers reached the foot of Avenida Belgrano where it meets with Paseo
Colon, some 500 metres from the CGT headquarters. Looking up the
slope one could see an apparently endless mass of humanity covering
the entire breadth of the avenue and stretching back as far as the eye
could see. Three huge banners were stretched out at the front of this
mass. One bore the legend ‘Montoneros - FAR’, another ‘Juventud
Peronista’ and the third proclaimed ‘Perön en el poder para el Social-
ismo Nacional*. The demonstrators were overwhelmingly young, and
for what seemed like hours on end they waited, arms linked, as the sun
lowered on a perfect porteno spring afternoon. Finally, in their
hundreds of thousands they, too, were allowed, grudgingly, to march
past the CGT. The homage they payed was somewhat different, the
chants were not those of traditional Peronism but, rather, procla
mations in favour of the ‘Patria Socialista’, and by the time the majority
of them marched past the balcony Perön had long since left.
The symbolism inherent in the event could hardly be missed. For the
first time in eighteen years Perön received the traditional gesture of
homage surrounded by leaders of the labour movement in their head
quarters. More was at stake than this, however. The clear gesture of
support Perön offered the union leadership, and the equally evident
snub for the radical sectors of Peronism symbolised the dramatic turn
of fortunes for both under the new government. The euphoria of the
days following the inauguration of Hector Campora was rapidly
fading. The resignation of Campora, the growing campaign in the
weeks after his resignation against the ‘infiltrators* within the move
ment, the role played by the unions in the election campaign which
brought Perön the presidency in September, all heralded a shift of
influence within Peronism. The popular feeling of hope and renewal
present in the first six months of 1973 had been palpable. It had been
clearly reflected in the crowds which had stormed Villa Devoto prison
on the day Campora was inaugurated and released the political pris
oners held there. It was also evident in the marked démocratisation of
the state apparatus during Campora*s brief rule. A sense of the possi-
244 Workers and the 'Revolution Argentina ’ , 1966-73
bility of participating in the proclaimed ‘national reconstruction’ was
all-pervasive among the Peronist youth of this era.
Yet, with hindsight, Perön’s choice of the union bureaucracy over
the more radical sectors of his movement seems predictable and cer
tainly consistent with his overall strategy. The cornerstone of this strat
egy was the Pacto Social. The pact was, essentially, an agreement
between employers and unions which froze wages and prices. Over
seen by the state as part of a general plan of national reconstruction, the
agreement had the binding status of law. It formed part of a wider strat
egy to achieve social and political conciliation. O n the political level
Perön reached a series of understandings with the Radical Party to pre
vent inter-party strife in the newly elected congress. Socially, the prin
cipal institutions of the Argentine employers and unions were given
privileged access to the state. The head of the Confederacion General
Economica, José Gelbard, became the Minister of the Economy; the
CGT likewise became an integral part of the administration of govern
ment policy. In the breathing space this would achieve, Perön hoped
to redirect the Argentine economy toward a new era of growth based on
Argentina’s emergence as an industrial exporter. Inflation would be
controlled as the sectional claims of employers and workers were kept
in abeyance. This would stimulate both domestic and foreign invest
ment which would generate the modernisation necessary to compete on
the world market. O n the basis of this renovated economy a future
stage of income redistribution would be contemplated.27
The success of such a strategy depended on several factors. First, the
weight of Perön’s personal prestige and commitment to the plan was
crucial in giving it legitimacy and inducing respect for it. Second, the
plan depended on the ability of key representative institutions such as
the CGE and the unions to translate the formal commitments into the
active respect of their members. Finally, much depended on the exist
ence of an international economic context which would make Perön’s
economic plans for the Argentine economy feasible. Within this con
text Perön’s preference for the Union bureaucracy over the radical
youth sectors of Peronism was logical. Ultimately, both his vision of
the future Argentine society and the needs of his immediate strategy
pointed toward his rehabilitation of the union hierarchy.
The implications of this choice for the Peronist youth and the Mon-
toneros soon became evident. Within a year they were to be driven into
sullen compliance or into clandestine opposition. Increasingly margin
alised and thrown on the defensive even before Perön’s death in July
1974, many would enter into open, armed opposition to his political
heir and widow, Isabel. At the same time, the position of the union
leadership was, in formal terms, immeasurably strengthened both
within the Peronist movement and within the working class. Bathed in
the newly reacquired aura of Peron’s blessing, their isolation within
the movement broken, the union leaders became, ironically, the chief
exponents of verticalismo - the campaign for unquestioning respect for
hierarchical authority within the movement. By late 1974 they had
driven their young opponents from the mainstream of the movement.
They had also, with the aid of the emerging extreme right of Peronism,
succeeded in removing all of the figures of political Peronism who had
shown sympathy for the radical sectors. Even before Peron’s death the
governors of Buenos Aires, Cordoba and Mendoza had been forced to
resign. In Buenos Aires the new governor was Victor Calabrö, a leader
of the metal workers. Between July and October 1974 the union
bureaucracy also settled their scores with the clasista union opposition.
They made use of the greatly enhanced powers granted them by a new
Law of Professional Associations passed in November 1973 and semi
official terrorism directed at these unions. The militant leaderships of
SMATA Cordoba, the Buenos Aires print workers, and finally the
Cordoba light and power workers were in rapid succession legally re
moved from their posts and then declared to be outlaws.
Yet, the position of the Peronist union leadership was in fact rather
more fragile than these appearances suggested. They had overcome the
isolation of the early 1970s and established themselves as legitimate in
terlocutors with the government, on an equal footing with employers
and political parties. However, the price demanded was a high one:
adherence to the Pacto Social with the severe limitations this implied for
their role as spokesmen for the working-class demands in the economic
arena. The risk involved would have been lessened if the pact had been
respected and if its economic results had been those envisaged for it.
But in the last resort neither the CGT nor the CGE had the credibility
necessary to enforce the compliance of their followers.28
The election victory and the expectations it had generated provoked a
wave of factory rebellions which for the first time inundated the in
dustrial belt of Gran Buenos Aires. While Peron’s prestige prevented
an explicit rejection of the pact’s wage controls, workers found a thou
sand ways to translate the political victory at the polls into gains on the
shop floor. Conditions of work, health and safety, back pay, job
reclassifications and new, authentic plant leaderships, emerged as issues
as innumerable scores accumulated in the pre-1973 period were now
settled. Thus, despite an offical policy of consensus and conciliation at
2 4 6 Workers and the 'Revolution Argentina\ 1966-73
the political level, in social terms the period saw a heightening of class
conflict.29
This situation inevitably disturbed the union leadership since they
were burdened with the responsibility for enforcing compliance with
an unpopular wage freeze which was in effect being by-passed by large
sections of their rank and file. N or did the employers make their task
any easier. The CGE was equally ineffective in enforcing its price
restraint. By late 1973 employers were unofficially raising prices and
charges of stockpiling and black marketeering became rampant. The in
ternational economic situation further added to Peron’s economic
problems. The Pacto Social coincided with a contracting world market
and a leap in international inflation triggered by the oil price rise. The
costs of Argentine industrial imports rose drastically. Employers clam
oured to pass these increases on to the consumers. By early 1974 the
impact of this situation on the balance of payments and on inflation was
becoming apparent, as was the general lack of confidence of entrepre
neurs as they refused to invest in new plant and expenditures.
The union leadership attempted to minimise the costs of their new
position of co-sponsors of wage controls and social harmony. After
Peron’s death they pressured Isabel Perön to reestablish free collective
bargaining. They were also able to defeat their opponents within the
Peronist movement and in the union opposition. The reasons for this
success in eliminating their competitors within Peronism and the work
ing class were several. Most simply, they were able to use the enormous
resources of the state to isolate and terrorise potential opponents. Any
analysis of this period which fails to take sufficient note of the inten
sive, all-pervasive impact of both official and para-police repression in
evitably misses a crucial component of the everyday experience of
political and union militants, particularly in the period after Perôn’s
death. The personal risks involved in militant activity became terrify
ingly high.
Perhaps more fundamentally still, both the Peronist and non-
Peronist left found themselves politically isolated within the working
class. In the case of the Peronist youth and guerrilla formations such
isolation seemed at times almost wilful. Their declaration of war against
Perön’s successor implied a disregard for the millions of votes cast by
Peronist workers less than a year earlier. Whatever the eventual collapse
of her government it seems clear that she still enjoyed, at least until June
1975, a strong degree of residual political legitimacy in the eyes of
Peronist workers. Thus, both the Peronist and non-Peronist guerrillas
The Peronist union leaders under siege 24 7
were doomed to fight out a tragic and uneven battle largely isolated
from the working class who formed the central subject of their radical
rhetoric. Increasingly, by 1975, they were involved in a bloody battle
for survival which profoundly shook Argentine civil society and had
little relevance for the working class. The macabre tit for tat of escalat
ing assassinations had a deep impact on the rank-and-file militants
who, bereft of the benefit of a clandestine infrastructure, found them
selves the favoured target of right-wing death squads.
For the clasista union opposition the situation was more complex, if
in the end no less personally tragic. The dissociation between the level
of social struggle and the political loyalties of the rank-and-file Peron-
ists, which had been apparent prior to 1973, became a critical factor in
these years and profoundly impacted on the development of the union
opposition movement. The discrepancy between the political ideology
of an Agustin Tosco or a René Salamanca and the political allegiance of
their overwhelmingly Peronist rank and file had not been critical under
the military regime. With the new Peronist government, however, such
a discrepancy inevitably created confusion and defeated their attempts
to build a radical political alternative to Peronism in government. To
oppose the economic policy of the Peronist government implied a pol
itical challenge, and while on the strictly economic terrain the workers
would follow radical leadership this was never translated into a trans
formation of their political allegiances. Indeed, even strictly union loy
alties to radical leaders became more ambivalent. It was now much
more difficult for workers to defend radical leaderships under attack
from a Peronist state for which the working class had fought since 1955.
The appeals launched by the state and union leaders based on ortho
doxy and loyalty were, therefore, both confusing and effective. The
union leadership was, thus, ultimately able to benefit from the reality of
the working class’s political identification with Peronism and the legit
imacy that this bestowed on them.
The inability of the Peronist and non-Peronist left to construct a
viable alternative leadership cleared the way for the emergence of the
union bureaucracy as the dominant force within the Peronist govern
ment during its last eighteen months in power. The victory was, how
ever, a pyrrhic one. While they were able to repress and marginalise
competitors within the working class and within Peronism they were
unable to reestablish their hegemony over their rank and file, or estab
lish their credibility as a dominant force within Argentine society. In
part this resulted from the ferocious battle launched by Isabel and her
2 4 8 Workers and the ‘Revolucion Argentina\ 1966-73
personal circle to diminish their influence. The union leaders were
involved in a debilitating battle against the president and her advisers
throughout her government.
Partly, too, this reflected the rapidly deteriorating economic situ
ation. As the last vestiges of the Pacto Social crumbled and the Argen
tine economy entered a deepening recession, accompanied by spiralling
inflation, the dangers of rank-and-file discontent reemerged in full
force. In June 1975 this discontent erupted in a massive popular protest
against the drastic economic stabilisation plan decreed by Isabel’s Min
ister of Economy, Celestino Rodrigo. The Rodrigazo which involved a
spontaneous general strike, factory occupations and demonstrations
which continued for nearly a month was a crushing blow to Isabel’s
government. Although the union leadership had willingly put itself at
the head of this upsurge and negotiated the annulment of the economic
measures and the resignation of Rodrigo and Lopez Rega, the Rodri
gazo had also exposed the precariousness of its own position. Able to
defeat opponents of both right and left within Peronism they were still
vulnerable to the unpredictability of working-class responses in a
deteriorating economy. Moreover, though they could clearly veto
economic and political arrangements they themselves had nothing to
offer by way of coherent alternatives. As the economic crisis deepened,
and with unrivalled influence over the state after the Rodrigazo, their
policy amounted to ad hoc crisis management combined with calls for a
return to traditional reformist economic measures which Argentina’s
situation made patently untenable.
In this context, deprived of effective leadership, the Argentine work
ing class waited out the long agony of Isabel Peron’s government.
Within the factories and barrios attempts began to emerge to fill the
vacuum created by Peronism’s internal implosion and the crushing of
the organised opposition movements. Coordinating committees, the
coordinadoras, emerged in the wake of the Rodrigazo in an attempt to
meet a need felt by both activists and rank and file for structures which
would bring workers together to coordinate activity and discussion
among workers in different industries in a particular zone. They were
not able, however, to fully develop in the time left between the June
mobilisation and the military coup ôf March 1976. The impact of econ
omic crisis and the demoralisation induced by the collapse of the Peron-
ist movement combined to produce a fatalism in the face of the long
rumoured miliary coup.
10
Conclusion
Of course, the terms of the problem are clear: class manifests itself not
only as institutionalised apparatus, but also as an ensemble ... of direct
action groups, and as a collective which receives its stacute from the
practico-inert field (through and by productive relations with other
classes) ... And these three simultaneous statutes arise in practical and
dialectical connection with one another, through a process which is itself
conditioned by the historical conjuncture as a whole. In fact, language
a lw a ys presents class too simply, either as always united, and ranged
against the exploiters, or as temporarily demobilised (having completely
relapsed into seriality). May it not be that these imperfect and incom
plete concepts are an accurate reflection of our inability to understand
this unique triple reality of a developing historical class?
Jean-Paul Sartre, C ritiqu e o f D ialectical R eason , vol. i, p. 685
The decades following the overthrow of Juan Domingo Perön in 1955
saw the reemergence of Peronist unionism as the dominant organised
expression of the Argentine working class, and the confirmation of
Peronism as the dominant political and ideological loyalty of that class.
Having survived a systematic attempt in the period immediately fol
lowing the 1955 coup to legally dismantle the centralised union move
ment built by Peron, and to forcibly eradicate its influence within the
working class, the union movement had by the mid-1960s emerged as
an organism of great social and political power. Together with the
armed forces they were, indeed, the two fundamental poles around
which Argentine society seemed to revolve. One of the principal
themes of this work has been to chart this transformation and to under
stand the nature of this union movement, and its leadership.
While we have outlined some of the elements of a firmly entrenched
union bureaucracy these are not in themselves necessarily a sufficient
explanation of the power of such a leadership, its survival, or its con
tinuing ability to influence and dominate its rank and file. There are,
certainly, a number of interpretations available from both academic and
249
25° Conclusion
more public sources. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the
union bureaucracy, and in particular Vandor, have simultaneously fas
cinated and repelled most commentators on Argentine society. The iso
lated elements of a general picture presented by these observers seems
evident enough and was reinforced by the general image propagated by
the media. Matonaje, pistolerismo, corruption, fraud, collaboration
with employers, negotiation with the state, bargaining with the armed
forces, have all been intrinsically bound up with both the image and in
terpretation of this leadership. They have acquired the status of almost
self-evident truths, social facts which common-sense observation con
firms and whose simple relating implies a series of connotations. While
this has certainly been true of the role of the union leadership in public
discourse it has been no less evident in more formal academic interpret
ations. Most of these interpretations of union development and behav
iour can, with little exaggeration, be regarded as falling within a
paradigm dominated by what Alvin Gouldner has called ‘the pathos of
pessimism*.1
At its most simplistic this paradigm has involved an explanatory
framework which looks primarily to the existence of fraud, corruption,
and violence for its key elements. With these the union leadership has
pursued its goal of accumulating and protecting its own power and
wealth through the incorporation of Peronist unionism within ‘the
system* and, ultimately, of integrating it within the strategic needs of
international capitalism. Within this perspective the unions have
become almost entirely subservient to the interests of the ruling class,
and the leadership has imposed this subservient status on its members
by a mixture of violence and fraud. This approach, it should be clear by
now, dominated the Peronist left’s view of Vandor and Vandorism and,
indeed, much of the non-Peronist left’s analysis as well.2 This analysis
has been presented with varying degrees of complexity. It can be seen at
its crudest in the press of the Peronist Youth in the 1969-74 period,
when the struggle against the ‘traitors’ of the union bureaucracy
became both an ideological and tactical obsession.
Yet, it could be argued that even a work as nuanced and as rich in
insights into the nature of the union bureaucracy as Rodolfo Walsh’s
Quién matô a Rosendof still remains fundamentally within this sim
plistic paradigm. By centering his analysis of Vandor on an investigation
of one of the most notorious cases of union gangsterism, Walsh inevi
tably makes this stand as a symbol of Vandorism’s profoundest mean
ing. The murder of Domingo Blajaquis and his companions, and of
Vandor’s own protégé and putative rival, Rosendo Garcia, dominate,
Conclusion 25!
as they are indeed intended to, the readers’ understanding of the Peron-
ist union hierarchy. In the penultimate chapter of the book Walsh does
attempt to provide a wider context by detailing the loss of jobs in the
metal-working industry and the drop in union membership, but this is
attributed to Vandor’s ‘sell out’ to the employers and the state and
serves largely to reinforce the dominant image of the work. Now it is
not my intention to minimise or deny the existence and increasing use
of violence and corruption by the Peronist union leadership. Indeed,
the increasing resort to such instruments of internal control was a major
trend documented in this work. But it is also clear that such factors
cannot be taken in isolation; they must be seen as elements of a wider
social and historical process if they are to have analytical usefulness in
explaining the nature of Peronist union leadership power.
A more academic version of the ‘pessimistic’ approach - and certainly
one with a more respectable sociological pedigree - is that with its intel
lectual ancestry in the works of Robert Michels, and ultimately Max
Weber. This has regarded the development of bureaucracy and oli
garchy as an inevitable tendency within labour organisations - an ‘iron
law of oligarchy’ in Michels’s words.3 The incorporating effect of an
advanced society on the individual union leader is often emphasised, as
is the growing dominance of the institutional needs of the union over
the less ‘rational’ wishes of the members. This leads to a situation
where, in the words of the sociologist José Luis de Imaz, ‘functional
criteria prevail over ideological passions*.4 Imaz saw this process as a
reflection of the growing status aspirations of both union leaders and
their constituents in an increasingly socially-mobile society. Although
Imaz’s approval of this process has not generally been shared by other
writers the tendency he was describing has not been questioned.
Another Argentine sociologist, Francisco Delich, has expressed a reluctant
verdict which can be regarded as representative of the consensus view:
In Buenos Aires the most important unions have been transformed into true
machines of social integration, into poles of transmission between the political
power and the working-class base. A caste of functionaries, the providing of a
broad range of social services which include health, education, leisure and
housing, among other things allows the union leadership a permanent manipu
lation of the rank and file.
Such a view is clearly a logical extension of earlier characterisations of

the nature of trade unionism under populist regimes. Indeed, one could
scarcely wish for a more explicit application of Michels’s general analy
sis to a modern labour movement.
* 5*
Conclusion
Evidently there existed a basis for this sort of analysis in the social re
ality of post-195 5 Argentina. Indeed one of the crucial concerns of this
work has been to analyse the process of ‘integration’, the growing
dominance of the ‘logic of institutional pragmatism* within the Peronist
unions. Many of the issues dealt with in the extensive literature on the
sociology of trade unions in Western Europe and the United States con
cerning the incorporation thesis have relevance to Argentina.6 It is
clear, for example, that what have been described as the ‘socialising
influences’ at work on trade union leaders played, as we have shown, an
important role in Argentina too.7 Constant bargaining with employers
and discussions with governments inevitably had a ‘corrupting’ effect
in terms of fostering a tendency to consider the point of view of man
agement rather than of their members, as well as pandering to the status
yearnings of working-class leaders. This in turn can be traced in the
adoption of new life styles: the acquisition of fast cars, barrio norte
apartments and invitations to fashionable dinner parties, all of which
distanced them from their members’ feelings and interests.
Similarly, the emphasis in much sociological analysis on the overall
integrating function of unions within modern capitalism is clearly per
tinent to the Argentine case.8 The Peronist union leadership played an
important functional role within the process of restructuring of Argen
tine capitalism in the 1950s and 1960s. The average productivity of
Argentine industry between 1953 and 1964 has been estimated to have
increased by some 62%.9 CO N A D E figures which take i960 as a base
of 100 show a rise in average productivity to 118 by 1966.10 Real wages
on the other hand did not recover to pre-1959 levels until the end of the
1960s.11 The fact that working-class resistance to the increased exploi
tation and lowered standard of living indicated by these figures was
kept within ‘acceptable* levels was due in no small part to the ability of
the union leadership to control its members; they undoubtedly fulfilled
a role as regulators of social conflict - the ‘managers of discontent* in C.
Wright Mills’s famous phrase.12 It is here that the union leaderships’
purging of the activists from the factories and unions after the defeats of
1959, and their collaboration in controlling the internal commissions,
acquires its true significance, as too does the growth of the social service
function of Argentine unions. The opposition to the Peronist union
hierarchy, either in the form of the duros of the mid 1960s, or the
Peronist youth and guerrilla formations of the late 1960s and early
1970s, took this reality at face value and fashioned their tactics accord
ingly.
Yet, the analysis we have presented cautions against a too facile ac-
Conclusion 253
ceptance of this apparently self-evident reality of union incorporation
and leadership collaboration. We have suggested, for example, that the
union leadership’s integrationist project must be analysed without
recourse to the sinister moral implications traditionally associated with
the term integracionismo in Peronist discourse if we are to assess this
process and its limits adequately. The moral affront and sense of be
trayal felt by many militants of the Resistance generation, and later by
the Peronist youth, must be recognised and understood but this should
not blind us to the fact that in the situation which existed in the 1960s
the logic of ‘institutional pragmatism’ was as inescapable, for both
leaders and led, as the logic of rationalisation.
Within an overall context shaped by an employer and state offensive
the union membership expected its leaders to take advantage of what
ever leeway the state was prepared to offer in order to maintain basic or
ganisation and conditions. As the caso Cardoso demonstrated, for all
the emotional difficulty they felt in accepting Cardoso’s talk of the need
to take advantage of legality, even the most intransigent of Peronist
unionists could in reality offer no viable alternative. Similarly, while it
is easy for sociologists to talk despairingly of unions being no more
than ‘machines of social integration’ by providing health, education,
leisure and housing services the fact remained that in a society where
the state provided very few of these basic nçeds workers tended, not
unreasonably, to look to their unions for such things. In this sense, it
could be plausibly argued that much of what is talked of as integration
in the Argentine context was in fact no more than a normal result of the
intrinsically interrelated relationship between unions and capitalism; a
development all the more to be expected in a society with as high a level
of industrialisation and unionisation as Argentina’s.
Beyond this it is surely legitimate to question whether any analysis of
the development of Peronist unionism after 1955 which is based on an
almost exclusive emphasis on integration within the system is an ad
equate description of reality. Contrary to the apparently self-evident
image of Vandorism which is generally elaborated I would argue that
rather than emphasise the extent of incorporation we could with per
haps greater profit insist on its limits. At the level of union-employer
relations, for example, too much should not be made of talks between
the CGT and the CGE. While they remained an important program
matic goal, in reality harmonious relations between unions and
employers were severely restricted. One author very sympathetic to
goals of class harmony has described industrial relations in Argentina in
these years in the following terms :
254 Conclusion
If we want to place collective bargaining in one of these categories [armed

peace, harmony at work, cooperation between unions and management] we
would undoubtedly have to opt for the first: armed peace. Our industrial
system has not reached the state of complete maturity ... necessary to stabilise
the relations between labour and capital.13
Clearly, the overall economic context is of importance here. Inte
gration as a viable strategy depends crucially on the capacity of an econ
omy to provide the goods in terms of wages and conditions. In a
situation such as existed in Argentina after 1955, with the deterioration
of both wages and conditions, a union leadership had to oppose, or at
least be seen to oppose, management and the state on this basic issue of
vital importance to its membership. The ‘managers of discontent' had
also to be, as Wright Mills recognised, the organisers of discontent.
N or was this simply a fear of being outflanked by a rank and file dissat
isfied with the performance of its leaders. A labour leader like Vandor
also needed, as we pointed out, from the point of view of his own bar
gaining needs with management and other political forces, to be able to
mobilise his members when necessary. This mobilisation might be of
an overwhelmingly controlled, limited nature but it was still sufficient
to render problematic the basis of any incorporation strategy.
While it is true that the union leadership played a crucial role in con
fining working-class discontent within limited parameters this was a
reformism which could still engender such ‘unincorporated* actions as
the factory occupations of the Plan de Lucha in 1964. As one author has
written while analysing the incorporation debate in sociological litera
ture: ‘If excessive discontent and conflict is disruptive of established
bargaining relations, excessive passivity is equally unpalatable - depriv
ing the whole institution of unionism of its basic raison d'être. The
union official. . . his task is to sustain a delicate balance between griev
ance and satisfaction, between activism and quiesence.’14 This is, of
course, an extremely ambivalent, and potentially risky process, from
the union leaderships* point of view, but it was just this ambivalence
that was at the core of Vandorism and which, once recognised, must
modify any simple incorporation thesis.
At the level of union-state relations a similar conclusion emerges
from our analysis. What strikes one about the decades following the fall
of Perôn is the fact that despite the evidently increased weight of the
Peronist unions within the socio-political system there was, in fact, a
marked paucity of formalised, institutional expressions of state-union
collaboration. This indeed was precisely one of the major complaints of
Conclusion *55
the unions, a major point of unfavourable comparison with the Peron
era, and one which was consistently emphasised in CGT propaganda.
A comparison with other industrialised nations with similar rates of
unionisation underlines the point. A writer assessing the role of the
unions in post-war British society has described it in the following
terms:
The unions have become in a very real sense part of the ‘establishment*. Their
association with the government and employers on scores of committees of all
kinds, and their accepted right to be consulted on any subject made them an im
portant influence on the nation*s councils ... They had become a part of the
body of the state in many of its intricate ramifications.15
To relate the position of British unions is to be struck immediately by

the contrast with the Peronist union situation. In no sense, even at its
apogee, could one really talk of Vandorism as part of the ‘establish
ment’, associated with government and management ‘on scores of com
mittees’, ‘a part of the body of the state’. For all its talks with generals,
its open-shirted bonhomie with presidents, the Peronist unions’
influence on the nation’s councils was grudgingly recognised and
strictly limited by the restricted tolerance for all things Peronist and
working class. A scotch with the Secretary of Labour was, ultimately, a
poor substitute for genuine institutions of, integration. The ambiguity
to which we frequently referred in the last part of this work in relation
to the union leadership’s power and position was thus both a source of
strength, but also, ultimately, a source of weakness and frustration.
The fine line that any union leadership walks between integration
and opposition was made even finer in the case of the Peronist union
leaders by the meagre nature of real gains that could be made. It was
frustration with a system which offered the facade, and potential, of
integration without the substance, which offered this leadership a cer
tain toleration in its political and economic activities while ensuring
that it could never finally take advantage of the power this toleration
bequeathed, which led them to welcome an end to this debilitating
game in the form of a military coup in 1966.
Yet, the support for Ongama’s coup was a crucial error since it re
moved even the limited space for manoeuvre which had existed. In
Ongama’s brave new world there was only room for outright oppo
sition or complete subservience. The crucial ambivalence which was
characteristic of the pre-1966 period was now abolished and with it the
source of Vandorism’s strength and weakness. Its ability to bargain,
25 6 Conclusion
negotiate and occasionally mobilise, which was a vital part of its re
lationship with its members, was now undercut and the way cleared for
new forces which years of demobilisation and acquiesence had held
back to emerge to challenge, albeit incompletely, this leadership.
There is, nevertheless, a further, and I think more important, caveat
which emerges from this work and which must be placed on an uncriti
cal acceptance of the integration paradigm. The elements of leadership
power, its use of coercive measures of internal control, its adoption of
an integrationist project, must be placed within a wider social context if
they are to have genuine analytical usefulness, and that context must be
the general history and experience of the Argentine working class, and
in particular the union rank and file, in the post-19 55 era. The power of
the Peronist union leadership cannot be viewed as distinct from that
history; it must ultimately be seen as a specific historical development
arising out of a general class experience which was itself related to a par
ticular project of economic development and the options and limi
tations this presented to organised workers bargaining over their
material conditions of work and life. In this context bureaucracy and
rank and file are not necessarily diametrically opposed poles, but are
rather intricately interrelated, the one with the other. It is evident, for
example, from our analysis of the Frondizi period that while elements
such as fraud, corruption and violence were increasingly used by union
leaderships to maintain their internal control, they could only be used
to the extent that they were because of the acquiesence of the rank and
file; they were not imposed on an entirely unwilling working class.
The issue of fraudulent union elections and the lack of rank-and-file
participation must be viewed in this light. Juan Carlos Torre’s elabor
ation of electoral participation rates in major unions shows rates
ranging from 20% to 40% on average.16 Thus, even with growing fraud
by the leaderships a not insignificant proportion of union members did
participate in the electoral process. In part this was due, we may sug
gest, to their recognition that while union bureaucratisation might rep
resent the ‘sanctification of inertia* implicit in the consolidation of the
Peronist union leadership, the unions nevertheless represented, in
Sartre’s phrase, ‘an abstract skeleton of the united class . . . a perma
nent invitation to unity’, a unity which represented a basic core of the
working class’s self-identity and self-defence in what was clearly per
ceived as an increasingly hostile and insecure environment.17
In a related fashion we may suggest that this recognition was also a
reflection of a basic reservoir of support that had its roots in the
working-class experience of demobilisation, resignation, and accept-
Conclusion *5 7
ance of the prevalent style of union government. This resignation and
acquiescence were not, however, absolute, given characteristics, in the
sense that for Michels and Weber mass membership apathy was the in
evitable corollary of oligarchic control and bureaucratisation in
modern organisations. The burden of our argument in this work has
been that this acquiescence was a relative phenomenon arising out of
the concrete social experience of workers in the defeats of 1959 and
i960, and the consequent demoralisation that followed, together with
the effects of the government’s economic offensive - unemployment,
rationalisation and lower real wages. This resulted, we have argued, in a
growing lack of belief for much of the 1960s in the efficacy of militant
collective action as workers sought either an individual accommodation
with forces they felt they could no longer effectively confront or were
disposed to increasingly trust in the formalised bargaining power of
their union leaders.
While this applied to both activists and rank and file, it was particu
larly important among the former. Here we find an increasing privatis
ation of attitude, a turning inward away from public engagement in the
early and mid 1960s. It will be recalled that Jorge Di Pascuale spoke of
the ‘hard times that were wearing out many people’ and of how ‘the ma
jority began to separate themselves from combative positions and dedi
cate themselves exclusively to their own affairs’. Alberto Belloni, too,
captured this process when he described his former activist comrades
who ‘now began to isolate me, to treat me with suspicion* and who
were, he noted, ‘becoming bureaucrats too in a small way’. It was these
former activists who formed the basis of the local union hierarchies,
and who were often coopted onto the national union leaderships. It
was, therefore, one of the peculiar strengths of the Peronist union
leadership that it was largely made up of, and used as instruments of its
domination, activists drawn from the working class. Those militants
who stood out against this tide inevitably found themselves isolated
from their constituency, their members in the factory. Jean-Paul Sartre
has captured the essence of the militant’s isolation in this type of situ
ation: ‘He is a leader when they are on the move; when they scatter he is
nothing . . . he cannot realise his personal ambition, if he has any,
except by inspiring in the masses a confidence renewed from day to
day: and he will only inspire confidence in them if he agrees to lead
them where they are going.*18 The early and mid 1960s were not aus
picious times for inspiring daily confidence among the Argentine work
ing class and militants like José Vazquez, Domingo Blajaquis, Alberto
Belloni and Raimundo Villaflor were to suffer bitterly for this.
2 5 8 Conclusion
We must also question the extent to which objective conditions exis
ted, by the 1960s, for the development of an autonomous rank-and-file
organisational alternative within the unions. In a general sense it is clear
that the collective bargaining system in Argentina had a built-in bias
against the development of such organisation; it militated against the
rank-and-file worker’s involvement in those areas of most immediate
concern to him. Bargaining was generally done at the national level, as
we have seen, between central union negotiators and the central
employers* federation for a particular industry. The very most plant or
ganisation could do was to monitor the implementation of the central
agreement. Even union dues were collected by a check-off system.
Meaningful, independent shop-floor organisation would thus have
been difficult to sustain at the best of times since there was little to con
cretely centre activity around. The flourishing of shop-floor organis
ation during the Resistance had been partly due to the dismantling of
this centralised system by the military regime. The restructuring of a
centralised system after 1958 was accompanied by a series of contracts
imposed in the wake of working-class defeat. As we saw in Part Three
these contracts greatly enhanced employers* freedom concerning pro
duction arrangements and work systems. In doing this, we argued,
they removed a whole series of issues around which membership in
terest and rank-and-file organisation could have been built, as indeed it had
been in the 1955-9 period. It was only in the late 1960s and early 1970s
that the demobilising impact of this situation was overcome and rank-
and-file opposition reemerged, primarily in the new modem indus
tries of the interior. In Part Five, we detailed the reasons for this
emergence and the limits of its challenge to both union hierarchy and
the state.
Now, this clearly has important implications for any discussion of
rank-and-file apathy and acquiesence, since we are dealing with a
system which clearly tended to foster rank-and-file passivity, and yet
which was independent of the specific, anti-democratic machinations
of Peronist union leaders. As we have pointed out, union leaders saw
the mutual benefit to be derived from such a system, but its develop
ment cannot be simply ascribed to leadership ‘betrayal*. It, too, must
be placed within the context of the demobilisation, and demoralisation
which we are describing. For many Argentine workers the logic of
rationalisation and incentive schemes seemed, by 1962/3, to be inescap
able given the lack of a viable strategy of rejection; most would seem to
have agreed, perhaps reluctantly, with the sale of what control they had
within the workplace in return for wage increases achieved for them by
their union leaders.
Conclusion 259
Thus, the relationship between Peronist union leaders and their rank
and file was far more complex and symbiotic than, certainly, the simple
integration paradigm put forward by both analysts and the media
would lead us to believe. The problem with this image, I would sug
gest, is that it creates two metaphysical abstractions, apparently polar
opposites but in fact one the corollary of the other: a working class that
always struggles and aspires to independent collective action regardless
of context and experience and a bureaucracy which always betrays and
represses those struggles and aspirations.
Beyond these abstractions lurks, I suspect, a deeper concern which
has to do with notions concerning the ontological status of the working
class. Argentine working-class history has been frequently perused,
analysed and used in order to explain an apparent lack, a failure of the
working class to act in a fashion in keeping with its allotted historical
destiny. Deviations from a path in keeping with its historical essence
have taken various forms, whether in terms of its original commitment
to a populist regime or in terms of the failure of the Resistance struggle
to break the hold of populist commitment and the continued Peronist
allegiance of the working class throughout the 1955-73 period. The
union leadership has, in this sense, provided a convenient deus ex
machina for disillusioned leftist intellectuals seeking an explanation of
the working classes* failure to measure up to their hopes for it and for
radicals within Peronism seeking to understand the reasons for Peron-
ism*s failure to transform itself into a movement of national and popu
lar liberation. The apathetic workers dominated by corrupt bureaucrats
bent on integrating them into Argentine capitalism associated with the
integration paradigm are counterposed to the inherently militant
workers seeking to overcome such domination and fashion a uniquely
Argentine socialism. This ‘romantic* image, which has involved a kind
of glorification of the presence of the masses within populism, an esti
mation of the ‘revolutionary* potential of such movements simply
because they did involve the ‘working class*, is, in this way, the mirror
image of the pessimistic approach.
Rather than draw sustenance from either of these approaches we have
tried in this study to avoid an essentialist notion of the working class.
Claude Lefort analysing the general problem of the submittance of the
working class to a variety of state and social bureaucracies has argued:
The proletariat is not a u to m a tically revolutionary. To the extent that its objec
tive situation ties it to an organised collectivity it tends to think of its own liber
ation in the context of a general social liberation. But as an individual the
worker can at any moment refuse to assume the destiny of his class and try to
find an individual solution to his problems .. ,19
i6o Conclusion
Such a recognition entails an understanding of the complex, multi

faceted variety of working-class action and consciousness and a denial
of a single, and essential, working-class nature.20 The implications of
such an understanding are evident in relation to the dyad resistance/
integration whose apparently radically opposed terms have dominated
much analysis of the Argentine working class’s history in the post-195 5
era. This work has documented the remarkable capacity of the Argen
tine working class to act for itself, to create rank-and-file organisation,
to organise resistance against social and political repression; indeed we
have argued that development of the working-class movement and of
Peronism in the post-19 55 era is incomprehensible without under
standing this rank-and-file experience. Nevertheless, it is also clear from
our study that such vitality and resistance did not preclude demobilisa
tion, passivity and the acceptance of the need, albeit temporarily, to
achieve an integration within the status quo as circumstances and ex
perience dictated.
The legitimacy of the union hierarchy and structure derived from its
capacity to express and reflect both aspects of this working-class ex
perience and consciousness. Yet, if this was a source of the bureau
cracy’s legitimacy it was also a potential source of insecurity and
fragility. As we have seen, the fine line between articulating the
demands of mobilised sections of the working class and acting as agents
of social control was frequently subject to pressures from the state
which were beyond the ability of the union leadership to control. The
period of the Revolution Argentina was characterised precisely by
such a crisis of legitimacy brought about by the emergence of sectors of
the working class who broke from their previous passivity and accepted
forms of action. Once again, however, we emphasised the complexity
of this crisis and the limits of the radical challenge to the union leader
ship’s legitimacy.
This sort of analysis also has implications for our understanding of
the relationship between Peronist ideology and the working class.
Generally speaking the ideological elements of Peronist discourse have
been taken at face value, as univocal and unambiguous. Notions such as
nationalism, class harmony, the paternalistic state and the role of the
leader have been described and then assigned positive or negative values
according to the ideological predilections, reformist or revolutionary,
of the investigator. The possibility of different meanings being attached
to the same, discreet ideological elements is thus rarely allowed for in
these analyses. Evidently, there were notions in Peronism which did
Conclusion 261
function to help ensure the reproduction of the dominant capitalist
social relations. The formal rhetoric of Peronism was not one which
saw society in primarily class terms; one of the essential notions present
in that language was ‘the people*, the critical division in society be
tween ‘the people* and ‘the oligarchy*, the corrupt few who for their
own selfish ends were exploiting the many, ‘the nation*. It has fre
quently been emphasised that such a concept had reformist impli
cations, a non-class potential appropriate to a movement led by
dissident elite sectors which functioned primarily as a channel for inte
grating the emerging urban masses within an expanded polity without
fundamentally altering the class relations of such a society.
Yet it is also clear from this work that such notions coexisted and
were interrelated with elements which made the consolidation of capi
talist ideological hegemony extremely problematic. We have argued
that these elements could at times be explicitly denying of capitalist
values and needs, posing an alternative reading of reality as part of an
emerging counter-discourse. This we have suggested could be seen
during the Resistance period. At other times, in different conjunctures,
these elements were more likely to be found in the form of tensions, im
plicit assumptions involved in social practice, values condensed from
the ‘lived experience’ of the working class. We have used Raymond
Williams’s term ‘structure of feeling* to refer to these tensions. Often,
we have suggested, there was a complex mixture of the two processes.
A recognition of this complexity enables us to interpret some of the
standard, apparently reformist slogans of Peronism in a more sensitive
light. A belief in the essential virtue of ‘the people’ still left open to
question the issue of who formed part of this category; as we have com
mented there was a tendency from the beginning of the Peronist experi
ence for el pueblo to become transformed into el pueblo trabajador.
Similarly, as we have pointed out, a commitment to a formal belief in
the ultimate possibility of the ‘good*, ‘beneficent* state where social
justice could be located did not preclude a recognition of the oppressive
character of the existing state. Perôn himself became a mythologised
figure for many Argentine workers in this period, but the myth had
both regressive and positive potential. Finally, working-class national
ism was itself a complex, paradoxical phenomenon. By taking
seriously, and insisting on, the relevance of notions of economic
nationalism which it had imbibed in the Perön era, and by envisaging
itself as the only social force sincerely committed to defence of the
nation’s interest, the working class laid the groundwork for a series of
2 6 2 Conclusion
confrontations with the governing forces within Argentine society
which stretched from the Lisandro de la Torre occupation of 1959 to
the conflict with the military governments of the 1966-73 era.
The nationalist notion of a harmonious and united national com
munity could itself become a source of antagonism as it embodied both a
utopian commitment to a society based on greater social justice and an
end to class conflict and a painful point of comparison with everyday
injustice and oppression.21 Thus, a formal commitment by Argentine
workers to the tenets of traditional Peronist ideology need not be taken
exclusively at face value. Such tenets were mediated by class experience
and practice and reinterpreted in the light of this changing experience.
The result was a frequently paradoxical working-class consciousness.
The allegiance to a movement whose formal ideology preached the
virtue of class harmony, the need to subordinate the interests of
workers to those of the nation and the importance of a disciplined
obedience to a paternalistic state did not eliminate the possibility of
working-class resistance and the emergence of a strong oppositional
culture among workers. Certainly, such a consciousness was far more
complex than would be indicated by a simple characterisation of it as a
form of reformist, ‘false consciousness'. On the other hand, this resist
ance could not be reduced to a pristine, unambiguous revolutionary
ideology of class conflict. It inevitably contained strong elements
which promoted integration and cooptation.
The closer attention to the complexity of ideological process which
we have attempted to outline in this work should also help us to better
approach one of the apparent conundrums of modem Argentine
history: the persistence of Peronism's domination of the working class
as a political and social actor. A pervasive form of explanation has been
one which has emphasised the continued adherence of workers to
populist ideology. Since these ideological maxims were originally for
mulated in a socio-economic conjuncture which radically altered in the
post-1955 period, a conjuncture which had facilitated a state-
sponsored income redistribution, it has been assumed that the working
class must have had an inadequate perception of these changes.
Workers have continued to espouse these maxims despite their failure
to correspond to social reality. We are back once more to a theory of
working-class populism as a form of social pathology so prevalent in
early analyses of the relationship of the working class and Peronism.
The continued adherence of workers to these tenets has clearly implied
irrationality, emotionalism and ‘false consciousness'.
Yet, as we have argued, this paradox lessens once we look behind the
surface gloss of formal ideology and recognise the ambivalent way in
Conclusion 2 6 3
which workers could at times recast traditional tenets of Peronist ideo

logy to express their changing needs and experience. In looking for ex
planations of Peronism’s continued weight within the working class in
the post-195 5 era we could more profitably perhaps emphasise the im
portance and meaning of the original Peronist experience for workers.
It is easy to overlook the all-embracing nature of this experience, its
erasure of prior working-class tradition and allegiance. The Perön era
saw the formation of a dominant working-class tradition and a pro
found recasting of the historical memory of Argentine workers. Their
experience of the post-195 5 era was to be framed within the parameters
established by this memory and tradition.
Once again, however, the pervasiveness of this tradition after 1955
should not be ascribed merely to irrational nostalgia. Memory and tra
dition were not ossified but were rather reinvented and reinterpreted
selectively in accordance with new needs. This was made possible
because of the continued relevance of the core of this historical experi
ence. Peronism did not only represent higher wages, its historical
meaning for workers was embodied also in a political vision which en
tailed an expanded notion of the meaning of citizenship and the
workers’ relations with the state, and a ‘heretical* social component
which spoke to working-class claims to greater social status, dignity
within the workplace and beyond, and a denial of the elite’s social and
cultural pretensions. These elements were most concretely embodied in
the new power and status of the union movement. It should be clear
from the narrative of the post-195 5 period contained in this book that
the essence of this historical experience continued to have relevance for
Argentine workers. The insistent attempts of the dominant forces in
Argentine society to exclude, or at best limit, Peronist participation with
in the political system, and to attack certain fundamental economic and
social gains, seemed to symbolise their unwillingness to fully recognise the
working-class claims embodied in its original commitment to Peronism.
In this context it could be said that Peronism’s continued vitality in
the 1955-73 period was at least partly due to its ability to express these
original working-class claims and their still ‘heretical* status. John Wil
liam Cooke frequently referred to Peronism as the ‘hecho maldito’ of
Argentine society which constantly bedeviled attempts of the ruling
elite to establish arrangements which excluded it. But what was the es
sence of this ‘damnable* quality? N ot, it would seem, in a particularly
radical formal ideology, or political programme, many of whose essen
tial tenets it shared with other political forces by the 1960s, nor in the
revolutionary nature of its policies while in office. Partly it lay in its pri
mary embodiment in a strong union movement, which however ‘prag-
264 Conclusion
made* its leadership, represented a considerable stumbling block to the

needs of Argentine capitalism. In part it also lay in the continued identi
fication, in however ambivalent a fashion, with the legacy of Peron-
ism’s original ‘heretical* appeal to workers.
This presented considerable problems for Peronism’s rivals for
working-class allegiance in the 1955-73 period. As we have seen, the
new wave of clasista militants who emerged after 1969 were constantly
confronted with this issue. It was on the ground established by the
working class’s pre-1955 experience that left-wing appeals fell in the
post-19 55 era. Many of the basic elements of leftist rhetoric had already
found echo in the Peronist experience. The contestatory, oppositional
credentials of Peronism were moreover reinforced by the Resistance
period, which is clearly of crucial importance in this process. Given this
situation what need was there for working-class adherence to a more
formal leftism symbolised by left-wing political parties? In this situ
ation, too, it was meaningless to expect workers to simply abandon a
tradition and experience which, for better or worse, they felt was their
experience and tradition, not that of a particular political party. Peron
ism had become by the late 1950s a sort of protean, malleable common
place of working-class identification. In the course of researching this
book I was constantly struck by the seemingly unquestioning, identi
fication, particularly amongst militants, of working-class activism, re
sistance and organisation with being a Peronist. It seems to have
become almost an accepted part of working-class ‘common sense* in
the 1955-73 period.
Finally, this was, I think, compounded by a perception of Peronism
as not primarily a political doctrine, nor a sectarian political party. Its
quest for social justice and a recognition of the working class’s rights as
citizens and workers was viewed as beyond the pettiness of party-
political strife. In a system where the legitimacy of party-political ac
tivity was constantly being undermined by institutional upheaval and
restrictions placed on the political expression of working-class
interests, this perception of the apolitical status of Peronism was a great
advantage. Osvaldo Soriano in his fine evocation of the tragedy of
Peron’s return in 1973 as experienced by a small town in the province
of Buenos Aires has captured this element. The mayor of the town,
Don Ignacio, a life-long Peronist, arrives one day to work in the town
hall to find that he has been denounced by rivals as a communist. When
he informs his assistant, Mateo, of the charges against them the latter
replies: ‘Bolsheviks? But how? I was always a P eronist. . . I never got
involved in politics.*22
Notes
i Peronism and the working class, 1943-55

1 For the military background to the coup of 1943 see Robert Potash, The
Army and Politics in Argentina, 1928-194$, Yrigoyen to Perôn (Stanford,
1969). For a general analysis of the 1943-55 era see Peter Waldmann, El
peronismo, 1943-19$$ (Buenos Aires, 1981). For developments in the
labour field see Samuel L. Baily, Labor, Nationalism and Politics in
Argentina (New Brunswick, 1967); also Hugo del Campo, Sindicalismo y
peronismo (Buenos Aires, 1983).
2 The rural elite’s economic interests were safeguarded by the Roca-
Runciman treaty of 1933 which guaranteed continued access to British
markets for Argentine beef in return for major concessions concerning the
status of British imports into Argentina. Effectively the treaty ensured the
maintenance of Argentina’s traditional position within the British sphere of
the international economy and as such it was denounced by nationalists and
others. See Miguel Murmis and Juan Carlos Portantiero, ‘Crecimiento
industrial y alianza de clases en la Argentina, 1930-40’, Estudios sobre los
ortgenes del peronismo, vol. 1 (Buenos Aires, 1972).
3 These figures are calculated on the basis of data -in the Economic
Commission on Latin America, El desarrollo econàmico en la Argentina
(Buenos Aires, 1959), cited in Miguel Angel Garcia, Peronismo: desarrollo
econàmico y lucha de clases (Llobregat, 1979), p. 54.
4 This peaked in 1943 when these non-traditional manufacturing exports
accounted for some 19.4% of total exports. It has been estimated that some
180,000 new jobs had been created by this export-led industrial growth in
the war years. See Juan José Llach, ‘El Plan Pinedo de 1940: su
significaciôn histörica y los origenes de la economia politica del
peronismo’, Desarrollo Econàmico, vol. 23, no. 92 (1984), pp. 515-58.
5 Garcia, Peronismo, p. 62.
6 Gino Germani, Politica y sociedad en una época de transiciàn (Buenos
Aires, 1962), p. 307.
7 Ruben Rotundaro, Realidad y cambio en el sindicalismo (Buenos Aires,
1972), p. 128.
8 Alejandro Bunge, Una nueva Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1940), p. 372.
9 For a detailed analysis of the internal divisions within organised labour in
this period see Hiroschi Matsushita, Movimiento obrero argentino: 1930-
26 5
2 6 6 Notes to pages 9-1 j
43: sus proyecciones en los origenes del peronismo (Buenos Aires, 1983);
David Tamarin, The Argentine Labor Movement, 1930-4;: a study in the
origins of Peronism (Albuquerque, 1985).
10 See Miguel Murmis and Juan Carlos Portantiero, ‘El movimiento obrero en
los origenes del peronismo*, Estudios, p. 80.
11 For Peron’s personal background and ideas see Joseph Page, Perôn: a
biography (New York, 1983). For an analysis of Peron’s labour policy and
its impact in the 1943-5 period see Walter Little, ‘La organizacion obrera y
el estado peronista*, Desarrollo Econômico, vol. 19, no. 75 (1979), pp. 331-
76.
12 On the background to the October events see Felix Luna, El 4;, crônica de
un ano decisivo (Buenos Aires, 1969).
13 See Louise Doyon, ‘El crecimiento sindical bajo el peronismo’, Desarrollo
Econômico, vol. 15, no. 57 (1975), pp- 151-61.
14 See Louise Doyon, ‘Conflictos obreros durante el regimen peronista, 1946-
55*, Desarrollo Econômico, vol. 17, no. 67 (1977) pp. 437-73.
15 See Juan Carlos Torre, ‘La caida de Luis Gay*, Todo es Historia, vol. 8, no.
89 (1974). One of the last symbols of laborista autonomy was Cipriano
Reyes, the meatpackers* leader, who remained in congress as a laborista
representative until 1948 when his mandate expired. Perôn then had him
arrested and he remained in prison until the end of the regime. For
laborismo see Cipriano Reyes, Qué es el laborismof (Buenos Aires, 1946).
16 See Rotundaro, Realidad y cambio, ch. 4. The Fundaciôn Eva Perôn was
established by an act of congress and was entirely under the control of Eva
Perôn. It acted as a huge patronage machine and distributor of social
welfare resources.
17 Economic Commission for Latin America, El desarrollo econômico, pp.
I2lff.
18 See Jorge Abelardo Ramos, Historia del Stalinismo en la Argentina (Buenos
Aires, 1974), for a highly critical account. For an official communist version
see Esbozo de la historia del Partido Communista Argentino (Buenos Aires,
1947). Also Rubens Iscaro, Historia del Movimiento Sindical, vol. 1
(Buenos Aires, 1974).
19 For examples of this approach see Germani, Politica y sociedad; Rodolfo
Puiggros, El peronismo: sus causas (Buenos Aires, 1965); Alberto Belloni,
Del anarquismo alperonismo (Buenos Aires, i960). For a critical review of
some of the basic assumptions see Walter Little, ‘The popular origins of
Peronism* in David Rock, ed., Argentina in the Twentieth Century
(Pittsburgh, 1975).
20 For a review of this revisionist literature see Ian Roxborough, ‘Unity and
diversity in Latin American history*, Journal of Latin American Studies,
vol. 16, part i (1984), pp. 1-26. Revisionist interpretations have not gone
entirely unchallenged. Gino Germani in his last contribution to the debate
on the origins of Peronism restated his basic arguments concerning the
weight of the new migrants in the formation of Peronism and the
importance of traditional psycho-social cultural patterns, see ‘El rol de los
obreros v de los migrantes intemos en los origenes del peronismo*,
Desarrollo Econômico, vol. 13, no. 51 (1973), pp. 435-88. For critical
comments see Tulio Halperin Donghi, ‘Algunas observaciones sobre
Notes to pages 14-18 2 6 7
Germani, el surgimiento del peronismo y los migrantes internos’,

Desarrollo Econômico, vol. 15, no. 56 (1975), pp. 765-81.
21 Gareth Stedman Jones, ‘Rethinking Chartism*, Languages of Class: studies
in English working class history (Cambridge, 1984), p. 97.
22 For the Radical Party see David Rock, Politics in Argentina, 1890-1930: the
rise and fall of Radicalism (Cambridge, 1975)
23 For Peron’s recognition of the importance of the Yrigoyenist heritage see
Felix Luna, El 4$: crônica de un ano decisivo (Buenos Aires, 1969), p. 205
and passim.
24 The term was coined by the nationalist historian, José Luis Torre, and
became widely used in the nationalist and opposition literature of the time.
25 For a political history of the 1930s see Alberto Ciria, Parties and Power in
Modem Argentina, 1930-46 (Albany, 1969); for examples of the specific
mechanisms of fraud see Felix Luna, Alvear (Buenos Aires, 1958).
26 See Norberto Folino, Barcelô, Ruggierito y el populismo oligarquico
27 For an account of this corruption see Luna, Alvear, pp. 196-234.
28 ibid., p. 232.
29 El Laborista, 24 January 1946, cited in Dario Canton, Elecciones ypartidos
politicos en la Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1973), p. 227.
30 The issue of the different categories of rights associated with a developing
concept of citizenship has been analysed in T. H. Marshall, Citizenship and
Social Class, London, 1947. Marshall makes the distinction between civil
and political rights associated with formal democracy and the gradual
enlargement of this notion of citizenship to embrace ‘social rights*. For an
outline and critique, see Anthony Giddens, ‘Class divisions, class conflict
and citizenship rights’, Profiles and Critiques in Social Theory (Berkeley,
1982). An attempt to develop such concepts for developing nations is to be
found in Gino Germani, ‘Clases populäres y democracia representativa en
América Latina’, Desarrollo Econômico, vol. 2, no. 2 (1962), pp. 23-43.
31 The conservative politician Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo’s comment on the
speeches of Alvear could with justification be extended to the politicians of
the Union Democratica: ‘His speeches seem plucked out of an anthology
of democratic commonplaces.* Cited in Ciria, Parties and Power, p. 128.
See also Luna, El 43, pp. io8ff for an examination of the political rhetoric of
the anti-Peronist opposition in 1945/6.
32 Luna, E l 43, p. 206.
33 Cited in Carlos Fayt, La naturaleza del peronismo (Buenos Aires, 1967), p.
M3 -
34 Cited in Luna, El 43, p. 192.
35 See Primera Plana: historia del peronismo, 31 August 1965.
36 Julio Mafud, Sociologta del peronismo (Buenos Aires, 1972), p. 107.
37 See Rock, Politics in Argentina, p. 59: ‘As the activities of the committees
illustrate, the Radicals relied a great deal on paternalistic measures. The
main advantage of this was again that it could be used to break down the
divisive interest group ties by atomising the electorate and individualising
the voter.*
38 Peron’s principal speeches from this era were collected and published in
Juan D. Peron, El pueblo quiere saber de que se trata (Buenos Aires, 1957).
2 6 8 Notes to pages 18-26
39 Guita Grin Debert, in Ideologia e populismo (Säo Paulo, 1979), presents
an interesting analysis of the role of individuals, classes and the state in
different forms of populist discourse. Her analysis of a quintessential
populist rhetoric of a populist leader such as Adhemar de Barros makes an
instructive contrast with Peron’s political discourse.
40 The principal group which influenced Peronism was FORJA, the Fuerza de
Orientaciön Radical de la Joven Argentina, made up primarily of dissident
Radical Party intellectuals. While its political influence was limited, the
status of intellectuals like Raul Scalabrini Ortiz, Arturo Jauretche, Luis
Dellapiane and others was considerable. Cipayo literally meant sepoy and
implied a servile instrument of a colonial power. The fact that the reference
was directly taken from British colonial history clearly implied that
Argentina under its traditional elite was as equally subservient to British
interests as colonial India. Vendepatria was an invented epithet meaning
literally ‘a seller of one’s country*.
41 See Llach, ‘El Plan Pinedo de 1940’, for the different political responses to
the issue of industrialism.
42 Milciades Pena, El peronismo: selecciôn de documentos para la bistoria
(Buenos Aires, 1973), p. 10.
43 Stedman Jones, Languages of Class, p. 96.
44 See, for example, Juan D. Peron, Doctrina peronista (Buenos Aires, 1973),
PP-.SÏ-8 3 -
45 Luis Franco, Biografta patria (Buenos Aires, 1958), p. 173.
46 Eduardo Colom, 17 de octubre, la revolucion de los descamisados (Buenos
Aires, 1946), pp. 106-7.
47 For a study of such themes in tango see Judith Evans, ‘Tango and popular
culture in Buenos Aires* (unpublished paper presented to the American
Historical Association conference, Washington, 1980). For an analysis of
the subtext of Peronist discourse as manifested by Peron’s speech on 17
October see Emilio de Ipola, ‘Desde estos mismos balcones’, Ideologia y
discurso populista (Buenos Aires, 1983).
48 Colom, 17 de octubre, p. 107.
49 From the socialist newspaper, La Vanguardia, cited in Angel Perelman,
Como bicimos el 17 de octubre (Buenos Aires, 1961), p. 78.
50 See Anson Rabinach, ‘Bloch’s theory of fascism’, N e w G erm a n C ritiq u e
(Spring 1977).
51 Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge, 1977), p.
Ï78.
52 Cited in Manuel Galvez, En el mundo de los seres reales (Buenos Aires,
1955 )» P - 7 9 -
53 Ernesto Goldar, ‘La literatura peronista* in Gonzalo Cardenas et al., El
peronismo (Buenos Aires, 1969), p. 151.
54 Cipriano Reyes, Como yo bice el 17 de octubre (Buenos Aires, 1973), P-
144.
55 Perelman, Como bicimos el 17 de octubre, p. 12.
56 Mafud, Sociologta del peronismo, p. 107.
57 See for example the classic tangos of Discépolo, ‘Qué vachaché*, ‘Yira,
yira*. Similar themes can be found in other forms of popular culture of the
1920 and 1930s such as grotesco theatre. See Noemi Ulla, T ango, rebeliôn y
nostalgia (Buenos Aires, 1967); Norberto Galaso, Discépolo y su época

(Buenos Aires, 1967); Gustavo Sosa-Pujato, ‘Popular culture’ in Ronald
Dockhart and Mark Falcoff, Prologue to Perôn: Argentina in depression
and war (Berkeley, 1975).
58 From Discépolo’s tango ‘Qué vachaché’. The lyrics can be found in
Osvaldo Pelletieri, Enrique Santos Discépolo: obra poética (Buenos Aires,
1976), p. 80.
59 See Julio Mafud, La vida obrera en la Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1976), p.
241*
60 The phrase is Osvaldo Pelletieri’s, in Pelletieri, Discépolo, p. 63.
61 Jacinto Cimazo and José Grunfeld, Luis Danussi en el movimiento social y
obrero argentino (Buenos Aires, 1976), p. 93.
62 ibid., p. 86.
63 Perelman, Como hidmos el 17 de octubre, p. 12.
64 See del Campo, Sindicalismo y peronismo. Also of interest is Ricardo
Gaudio and Jorge Pilone, Estado y relaciones obrero-patronal en los
origenes de la negociaciôn colectiva en Argentina, CEDES, Estudios
Sociales, no. 5 (Buenos Aires, 1976).
65 Cimazo and Grunfeld, Luis Danussi, p. 103. See also Tamarin, Argentine
Labor Movement, especially chapter 7. Tamarin stresses the importance of
communist organising activity in moving beyond the boundaries of the
traditional organised sectors of the working class, though he notes that the
increase in union membership in the late 1930s and early 1940s scarcely kept
pace with the increase in the labour force, or succeeded in penetrating those
areas of greatest industrial expansion.
66 Interview with Don Ramiro Gonzalez, Rosario, November 1976.
67 Interview with Lautaro Ferlini, Buenos Aires, November/December 1976.
68 Bourdieu» Outline, p. 170.
69 According to Felix Luna this term was first used by the socialists in their
paper, La Vanguardia, to refer to Peron’s supporters. Luna, El 4y
70 See Julie M. Taylor, Eva Perôn: the myths of a woman (Chicago, 1979).
The most complete biography of Evita is that of Nicholas Fraser and
Marysa Navarro, Eva Perôn (New York, 1981).
71 A point made by Dario Canton in Fayt, La naturaleza del peronismo, p.
343*
72 José Gobello, Diccionario lunfardo y otros términos antiguos y modemos
usados en Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires, 1975). The exception was the use of
negra among the poor as a term of affection between a man and woman.
73 Luna, E l 4;, p. 3 jo.
74 Quoted in Perelman, C o m o h id m o s el 17 de octubre , p. 78.
75 The phrase is Leopoldo Marechal’s: ‘It was the invisible Argentina that
many had announced in literature without even knowing or loving their
millions of concrete faces.’ See Elbia Rosbaco Maréchal, Mi vida con
Leopoldo Maréchal (Buenos Aires, 1973), p. 91.
76 Luna, £ /* ;, p. 350.
77 For the notion of ‘counter-theatre’ see E. P. Thompson, ‘Eighteenth-
century English society*, Social History (May 1978).
78 Luna, p. 397.
79 Cited in Monica Peralta Ramos, Etapas de acumuladôn y alianzas de clase
270 Notes to pages 34-48
en la Argentina, 1930-1970 (Buenos Aires, 1972), p. 120. For justicialist
ideology see Alberto Ciria, Perôn y el justicialismo (Buenos Aires, 1974).
80 Peralta Ramos, Etapas de acumulaciôn,p. 120.
81 Servicio Internacional de Publicaciones Argentinas, Emancipation of the
Workers (Buenos Aires, 1952), pp. 27-30.
82 Goldar, ‘Literatura peronista*, p. 155.
83 Cited in Dario Canton, El parlamento argentino en épocas de cambio,
1890, 1916, y 1946 (Buenos Aires, 1966), p. 168.
84 Argentina de Hoy, August 1953.
8 5 Sylvia Sigal and Juan Carlos Torre, ‘Reflexiones en torno a los movimientos
laborales en América Latina* in Ruben Katzman and José Luis Reyna,
eds., Fuerza de trabajo y movimientos laborales en América Latina
(Mexico City, 1969), p. 145.
86 The concept of disponibilidad (availability) occurs in many of Germani’s
key works. See especially PoUtica y sociedad and ‘Clases populäres y
democracia respresentativa*. While it seems to me that criticisms of this and
other concepts in the work of Germani in terms of their implications of
passivity and manipulation are justified, Germani*s work does,
nevertheless, contain many fundamental insights into the specificity and
peculiarity of a movement such as Peronism which are in tune with the
general drift of the argument in this chapter. In particular his insistence
concerning the uniqueness of Peronism as a form of political mobilisation
seems to me to be of continuing relevance. His insistence that this should be
viewed within the framework of a traditional/modem dichotomy would
seem to me to be both wrong and unnecessary, a point astutely made by
Tulio Halperin Donghi in ‘Algunas observaciones*.
2 The survival of Peronism

1 Critica, 19 September 1955.
2 Critica, 21 September 1955.
3 Santiago Sénen Gonzalez and Juan Carlos Torre, Ejército y sindicatos
(Buenos Aires, 1969), p. 12.
4 ibid., p. 33.
5 El Obrero Ferroviario, October 1955. A similar pattern occurred in the
petrol workers’, meatpackers’, and garment workers* unions.
6 C G T , 7 October 1955.
7 ibid.
8 La Vanguardia, the socialist newspaper, carried a report in late October on
the state of union affairs in Rosario in which it bitterly attacked the action
of local authorities who had handed back the local CGT to Peronists after it
had been taken over by a local socialist/syndicalist committee. See La
Vanguardia, 27 October 1955.
9 See Sénen Gonzalez and Torre, Ejército y sindicatos, pp. 87-90, for the
different civilian backers of the distinct military tendencies.
10 Critica, 2 November 1955.
11 See Cerrutti Costa’s statement to this effect in Sénen Gonzalez and Torre,
Ejército y sindicatos, pp. 137-43. On Lonardi’s thought and actions in this
period see Luis Ernesto Lonardi, Dios es justo (Buenos Aires, 1958) and
Marta Lonardi, Mi padre y la revolution del 55 (Buenos Aires, 1980).
12 Sénen Gonzalez and Torre, Ejército y sindicatos, p. 97.
13 ibid., p. 97.
14 La Nation, 24 September 1955, mentions shooting in Avellaneda involving
‘undisciplined elements*. For details of the Lanus demonstration see
Roberto, ‘De la resistencia peronista a las elecciones de 11 de marzo’,
Peronismo y Sotialismo, no. 1, September 1973.
ij La Nation, 26 September 1955.
16 Interview with Alberto Belloni, Buenos Aires, 14 January 1974. Belloni
was at this time a worker in the port of Rosario.
17 New York Times, 25 September 1955. This is one of the best sources for
events in Argentina at this time; certainly many events which never
penetrated the Argentine press are to be found there.
18 Juan M. Vigo, La vida por Perôn: crônicas de la Resistencia (Buenos Aires,
1973 )» P- 5 4 -
19 ibid., p. 50.
20 New York Times, 20 October 1955.
21 Interview with Alberto Belloni,
22 New York Times, 4 November 1955. The New York Times gave a figure of
65% absenteeism nationally, reaching 100% in the most industrially
concentrated barrios.
23 Roberto, *De la resistencia peronista*.
24 Vigo, La vida por Perôn, p. 55.
25 See Sénen Gonzalez and Torre, Ejército y sindicatos, p. 54.
26 New York Times, 15 November 1955.
27 Vigo, La vida por Perôn, p. 69.
28 La Nation, 16 November 1955. Only those unions already taken over by
anti-Peronists such as the shop clerks and the bank workers, and public
services forcibly kept open by the military, failed to respond.
29 New York Times, 16 November 1955.
30 Miguel Gazzera, ‘Nosotros los diligentes* in Norberto Ceresole and
Miguel Gazzera, Peronismo: autocntica y perspectivas (Buenos Aires,
1970), p. 61.
31 Statement of the Minister of Labour, Raul Migone, La Nation, 17
November 1955.
32 Decree 14.190 which modified the previous decree 7107 spoke of
rehabilitating some 92,000 persons. Even after this, however, some
observers maintained that upward of 50,000 remained legally proscribed
from union activity. Qué, 26 August 1956.
33 This happened for example in the SIAM di Telia plants. See La Verdad, 28
November 1955.
34 Qué, 21 December 1955.
35 La Verdad, 2 January 1956.
36 La Vanguardia, 5 January 1956.
37 See the speech of José Gelbard, the head of the Confederaciön General
Economica, at the Congress of Productivity and Social Welfare held in
March 1955. ‘Report of the proceedings of the Congreso National de
Productividad y Bienestar', Hechos e Ideas (Buenos Aires, 1955), p. 282.
* 7*
Notes to pages $8-70
38 ib id .j p. 280.
39 For details of this resistance see Daniel James, ‘Rationalization and working
class response: the limits of factory floor activity in Argentina*, Jo u rn a l o f
L a tin A m erica n S tu d ies , vol. 3, part 2 (1981), pp. 375-402.
40 See Doyon, ‘Conflictos obreros*.
41 Q u é , 25 April 1956.
42 Ministerio de Trabajo y Prevision, N u e v o régim en de rem uneraciones y de
las convenciones colectivas de trabajo (Buenos Aires, 1956).
43 L a N a c iö n y 20 February 1956. A new decree, 6121, April 1956, specifically
said that in the event of modernisation of a factory provisions which
stipulated the number of workers to a job would not apply.
44 L a V a nguardia , 21 June 1956.
45 Pamphlet, no date but probably late 1956, in author’s files.
46 Interview with Alberto Belloni, Buenos Aires, January 1974. G orila was
the term of contempt used by Peronists to describe anti-Peronists.
47 Q u é , 25 April 1956.
48 The arbitration award in the meatpacking industry stated that the existing
norms concerning sick leave were an ‘indirect hindrance’ to productivity as
defined in decree 2739. Ministerio de Trabajo y Prevision, L a u d o del
trib u n a l a rbitral, no. 63/1956 (Buenos Aires, 1956).
49 Interview with Alberto Belloni, Buenos Aires, January/February 1974.
50 E l V itivin ico la , February 1956.
52 L ucha O b rera , 22 December 1955.
53 Interview with Sebastian Borro, Buenos Aires, January 1974.
54 U n id a d O b rera , June 1956.
5 5 See L a V anguardia, 17 May 1956, for a bitter denunciation by the socialists
of this trend.
56 U n id a d O b rera , June 1956.
57 Q u é , 9 October 1956.
58 The most prominent examples were Angel di Giorgio, interventor of the
bus and tramdrivers* union and Francisco Péréz Leirös at the head of the
municipal workers union.
59 L a V anguardia, 31 May 1956.
60 L a V anguardia, 16 August 1956.
61 In fact the party was allowed to participate in the elections to the
constituent assembly in July 1957. There was a noticeable decline in its
union militancy at this.time.
62 The Peronists won in the industrial unions, the libres in some white-collar
unions such as the shop clerks. The garment workers also elected a socialist
list and the print workers a syndicalist headed list.
63 Economic Commission for Latin America, E conom ic D e v e lo p m e n t a n d
In c o m e D istrib u tio n in A rg e n tin a (New York, 1969) p. 254.
64 R. Mallon and Juan Sourrouille, E conom ic Policy M a k in g in a C onflict
S ociety (Cambridge, Mass., 1975), p. 18. One author calculates that the
share of wages in the gross national income declined from 49.5% in 195 5 to
47.3% in 1957. See Clarence Zuvekas, Jr, ‘Economic growth and income
distribution in post-war Argentina’, In ter-A m e ric a n E conom ic A ffa irs, vol.
20, no. 3 (1966), pp. 1^-39.
Notes to pages 70-81 273
65 Interview with Ernesto Gonzalez, Buenos Aires, February 1974.
66 Leaflet in author’s possession, no date but issued by rank-and-file groups
in early January 1957. The incident is confirmed by a report in La
V a n g u a rd ia , 3 January 1957.
67 Rodolfo Walsh, Quién matô a Rosendo? (Buenos Aires, 1969), p. 19.
3 Commandos and unions
1 Interview with Sebastian Borro, Buenos Aires, January 1974.
2 ibid.
Belloni contrasted this to the thirty or so members who attended meetings
prior to 1956.
4 See Q u éj 16 April 1957, for the programme of the Intersindical.
5 M a y o ria , 17 July 1957.
6 Perôn-Cooke correspondencia, vol. 1 (Buenos Aires, 1972), p. 151.
7 Details of this attempt can be seen in M a yoria , 24 June 1957 and 6 January
1958. In effect 358 delegates were allocated to ten organisations and 311 to
eighty-seven; of the ten unions six were anti-Peronist. See Q«é, 22 August
1957-
8 Noticias Graftcas, 7 January 1956.
9 Noticias Grdficasy 7 February 1956.
10 Noticias Grdficas, 18 February 1956.
13 La Razony 3 April 1956.
14 Noticias Grdficas, 18 March 1956.
16 La Razôn, 7 March 1956.
17 Vigo, La vida por Perony p. 175.
18 ibid.y p. 149.
21 Noticias Grdficas, 22 February, and 2 March 1956.
22 Leaflet in author’s possession, no date but probably mid 1956.
24 La Razôn, 16 March 1956.
2j The rising led by Valle was based on the few remaining Peronist officers,
particularly among the lower ranks and the non-commissioned officers,
together with some disillusioned nationalist officers who had been part of
Lonardi’s faction. The rising was doomed from the beginning since its plans
were known to military intelligence. It seems that Aramburu deliberately
let it continue in order to have a pretext for an exemplary purge. The
execution of officers and NCOs who had taken pan was unprecedented in
Argentine military history and was to become an important pan of the
popular culture of the Resistance. For the civilian repression which
followed the rising see Rodolfo Walsh, O p eration M asacre (Buenos Aires,
! 96 3 ).
26 See Perôn-Cooke correspondencia, vol. 2, p. 391.
274 Notes to pages 82-93
28 Frente Obrero, August 1956.
29 Crönica por un resistente: crönicas de la Resistencia*, Antropologia del
Tercer Mundo, August 1972.
30 Neo-Peronists were chiefly politicians from the pre-1955 era who had held
posts within the Peronist Party. Their post-19 55 careers were usually based
on their potential ability to call on the loyalty of pan of the political
apparatus in their particular region.
31 Perôn-Cooke correspondence, vol. 2, p. 11.
32 ibid.y p« 35*
33 Perôn-Cooke correspondence, vol. 1, p. 144.
34 ibid., p. 227.
35 Soberanta, 4 June 1957.
36 Perôn-Cooke correspondencia, vol. 2, p. 8.
37 For details of these negotiations which culminated in the agreement to
throw the Peronist vote behind Frondizi, see Ramon Prieto, El Pacto
38 ‘Continuist* was the name given to the candidacy of Ricardo Balbm of the
Union Civica Radical del Pueblo, because it was assumed that the military
saw in the radicals a means of continuing the post-1955 anti-Peronist
policies.
39 Another important issue for unionists was the parlous financial state of the
unions after military interventions. This badly affected the services offered
by the unions to their members. This gave a particular urgency to the issue
of the full recuperation of the unions.
40 Interviews with Alberto Belloni and Sebastian Borro, Buenos Aires,
January/February 1974.
4 Ideology and consciousness in the Peronist resistance

1 Ministerio de Trabajo y Seguridad Social, Conflictos de trabajo (Buenos
Aires, 1961).
2 Crisol del Litoral, no. 2, November 1955.
3 El Cuarenta, no. 1, April 1957.
4 Palabra Argentina, 10 December 1957.
j Azul y Blanco, 26 December 1956.
6 Palabra Argentina, 10 December 1957.
7 ibid.
8 See Marilena Chaut, ‘O discurso competente*, Cultura e democracia, o
discurso competente e outras falas (Säo Paulo, 1982).
9 Cited in Roberto Carri, ‘La , Resistencia peronista: crönica por los
resistentes*, Antropologia del Tercer Mundo, June 1972.
1 0 Crisol del Litoral, no. 1 , October 1 9 5 5 .
11 ibid.
12 ibid.
13 Leaflet in author’s possession.
14 Crisol del Litoral, no. 4, December 1955.
15 Leaflet in author’s possession, probably from late 1956, simply addressed
to ‘Obreros argentinos*.
16 El Cuarenta, no. 2, May 1957.
17 Raymond Williams, M a rxism a n d L itera tu re (Oxford, 1977), p. 130.

18 Cam, 'La Resistencia peronista’.
19 Ernesto Laclau, ‘Towards a theory of populism*, Politics a n d Id eo lo g y in
M a rx ist T h e o ry ( London, 1977), pp. 143-200.
20 Williams, M a rxism a n d L itera tu re , p. 132.
21 J u a n cito y Rosario, 18 September 1967.
22 JuancitOy Rosario, October 1957.
5 Resistance and defeat

1 L in e a D u r a , 25 June 1958.
2 In July they had refused to become involved in a campaign against
Frondizi*s refusal to nationalise the foreign-owned utility companies,
DINIE and CADE. In August they had compromised in a strike involving
medical personnel in the union health services. They had also refused to call
a strike for 17 October.
3 C la rin , 8 November 1958.
4 P alabra O b r e r a y 20 November 1958.
5 Q«e, 25 November 1958.
6 L in e a D u r a , 4 November 1958.
7 For Frondizi*s economic ideas see Rogelio Frigerio, ‘Morfologia del
subdesarrollo*, In tro d u ccio n a los p roblem as nacionales (Buenos Aires,
1965). Also Clarence Zuvekas, ‘Argentine Economic Policy 1958-62: the
Frondizi government’s development plan*, In ter-A m e ric a n E conom ic
A ffa ir s , vol. 22, no. 1 (1968), pp. 45-75.
8 These contracts had represented part of the Peronist regime’s opening to
foreign capital in its last years. For Frondizi’s criticism see Arturo Frondizi,
P etrôleo y p o litica , 3rd edn (Buenos Aires, i960).
9 During the election campaign Frondizi continued to attack foreign
intervention in the oil industry. Given the emotive symbolic power of this
issue the desarrollistas were reluctant to extend their new realism
concerning foreign capital to this area. However, there was no logical
reason why oil should be excluded from this analysis. A similar change in
Frondizi’s thinking occurred with agrarian reform. Under Frigerio’s
influence this was transformed from a demand for change in the structure of
landownership to an emphasis on technical improvement. These changes
caused growing friction within the UCRI. Frondizi had brought with him
in his split from the Radical Party an important number of younger
militants who took the more radical strands of the UCRI platform
seriously. See Ismael Vinas, O rd en y progreso: andlisis d el frondicism o
(Buenos Aires, i960), pp. 173 ff.
10 Juan José Real, j o anos de historia argentina (Buenos Aires, 1962), p. 172.
11 ib id ., p. 172.
12 Gomez Morales, the Minister of Economic Affairs, estimated that more
than Si00 million of foreign investment was needed to meet steel expansion
targets, $200 million for petroleum production. Contracts with Fiat,
Kaiser, and Standard Oil had reflected this concern as did the friendly
reception given to Milton Eisenhower, the American president’s brother,
on an official visit in 1953.
13 In his book La fuerza es el derecho de las bestias (Montevideo, 1957),
Perön defended the contracts and denounced those who opposed foreign
investment in any circumstances as nacionalistas de opereta (p. 91).
14 Decree 14,780 gave foreign investors the same rights as domestic investors.
It also allowed the completely free remittance of profits. Other measures
included income tax deductions of up to 100% on new investments in
machinery and transport equipment.
15 See Zuvekas ‘Economic growth and income distribution in post-war
Argentina’; also Mallon and Sourrouille, Economic Policy Makings p. 72.
16 Zuvekas, ‘Argentine economic policy 1958-1962’.
17 Ministerio de Trabajo, Conflictos de trabajo.
18 In the last months of 1958 Peronists won in textiles, telephone and
communications, metal working, meatpacking, food processing,
transportation, docks, light and power, and shoe making.
19 Figures are taken from Mayonay 20 November 1958. It must be said that
figures for union elections are notoriously difficult to be precise about in
Argentina. However, these figures seem to me to be about right and there
was very little accusation of fraud in the non-Peronist press.
20 Ministerio de Trabajo, Conflictos de trabajo, table 25. According to the
International Labour Organisation this was also the highest strike figure in
the world in 1959.
21 The best account of the negotiations between the union and Frondizi over
this issue is the interview with Sebastian Borro, En Lucha, 2nd epoch,
February 1974. Borro confirmed the details in my interview with him,
Buenos Aires, January 1974.
22 For an account of the build up of the strike see Mayoria, 29 January 1959.
23 Palabra Obreray 29 January 1959.
24 MayorUj 29 January 1959.
25 Report issued by the Comando Nacional Peronista, a clandestine group, El
Soberanoy 2nd epoch, 9 March 1959.
26 Interview with Tito Dragovitch, Buenos Aires, 10 September 1976.
Dragovitch was a militant in the edible-oil processing union which had its
stronghold in Avellaneda.
27 Interview with Alberto Belloni, Buenos Aires, January 1974.
28 The new committee consisted of Castillo of the San Martin regional CGT,
Jonch (telephone workers), Poccione (leather workers), Racchini (glass
workers), Garcia (rubber workers), Orellano (flour milling), Dominguez
(Chaco), Dotan (Santiago del Estero), and Gazzera (pasta makers). For
accounts of the meeting see darin, 30 January 1959, Palabra Obrera, 4
February 1959.
29 Palabra Obrerat 4 February 1959.
30 Pueblo Unidoy 12 March 1959.
31 ibid.
32 Documentos del Plenario Nacional de las 62 Organizaciones, Buenos Aires,
December 1959, in mimeo.
33 ibid.
34 Interview with Sebastian Borro.
35 AO T, 19 September 1959.
36 Mayoriay 29 September 1959.
37 Ministerio de Trabajo, Conflictos de trabajo.
38 Puente’s speech was to the Circulo Argentino de Estudios sobre
Organizaciön Industrial; its text was included in the Documentos del
Plenario Nacional de las 62 Organizaciones, Buenos Aires, May i960. One
of the main demands of the 62 Organisations at this time was for Puente’s
removal.
39 Walsh, Quién maté a Rosendof, p. 20.
40 La Democracia, 22 May i960.
41 Interview with Alberto Belloni, Buenos Aires, January 1974.
42 Interview with Jorge Di Pascuale, En Lucha, 2nd epoch, February 1974.
43 Interview with Herminio Alonso, Buenos Aires, December 1976. The
phrase ‘the face of God’ (‘la cara de Dios’) refers to female genitalia in
porteno slang.
44 Palabra Obrera, 12 April i960.
45 Palabra Obrera, 2 February 1961.
46 Palabra Obrera, 1 September i960.
47 Palabra Obrera, 11 May i960.
48 Interview with Alberto Bordaberry, Buenos Aires, October 1976.
49 ibid.
50 Walsh, Quién maté a Rosendo?, p. 37.
5 1 ibid., p. 3 6 .
52 ibid., p. 37. The quiniela was a form of numbers game played daily for a
small initial stake.
53 Quoted in Palabra Obrera, 12 January 1961.
54 Palabra Obrera, 13 April 1961.
55 Palabra Obrera, 20 September 1961.
56 Interview with Alberto Belloni.
57 ibid.
58 ibid.
59 Interview with Sebastian Borro.
61 El Trabajador de la Came, August i960.
62 Interview with Jorge Di Pascuale, Buenos Aires, January 1974. Di Pascuale
confirmed to me the dilemma the hardline activists found themselves in.
They recognised the full implications of accepting back the CGT on
Frondizi’s terms but they could not ignore the opportunities provided by
Frondizi.
63 Documentos del Plenario Nacional de las 62 Organizaciones, Buenos Aires,
May i960.
6 The corollary of institutional pragmatism

1 D o c u m e n to s d e l p len a rio nacional de las 62 O rganizaciones , Buenos Aires,
May i960.
2 ib id .
3 D o c u m e n ta tio n e In fo rm a cio n L a b o ra l, no. 1, March i960.
4 ib id .
5 ib id .
6 P alabra O b r e r a , 19 February, i960.
7 ib id .
8 E l Alpargateroy June i960.
9 ib id .
10 For the debate concerning the extent of plant modernisation under Frondizi
see Zuvekas, ‘Argentine economic policy, 1958-1962’; Mallon and
Sourrouille, Economic Policy Making.
11 E l A lpargaterO y September i960.
12 A lpargatas a l d e sn u d o t June 1961. Edited by the Centro Comunista,
Barracas, Buenos Aires. An advert for labour issued by the company in
June i960 carried a tacit admission of the importance of increased physical
effort. It advised those interested that: ‘Alpargatas needs labourers from 21
to 35 years of age: a minimum weight of 65 kilos - anyone under this need
not apply.* L a P rensat 9 June i960.
13 Ministerio de Trabajo y Seguridad Social, C on ven ciô n C olectiva de trabajo
de la industria textily 155/60 (Buenos Aires, i960).
14 P alabra O b rera t 2 March 1961.
15 Ministerio de Trabajo y Seguridad Social, C on ven ciô n C olectiva de trabajo
de la in dustria metalürgicay 55/1960 (Buenos Aires, i960).
16 P alabra O b rera t 22 October 1959.
17 Ministerio de Trabajo, C o n ven ciô n colectiva de la industria m etalürgica.
18 Taking 1950 as a base of 100 the productivity per hour worked in the textile
and metal-working industries rose from 114.1 in 1956 in the case of metal
working to 150.3 in 1961; in textiles the increase was less dramatic, from
127.6 to 130.2. Manufacturing industry in general increased from 113.8 in
1956 to 141.4 in 1962. See CGE-Consejo Federal de Inversiones, P rogram a
C onjuntO y vol. 3 (Buenos Aires, 1964), p. 115.
19 A O T y 18 January 1961.
20 For a typical statement of this sort of thinking see Hamilton Alberto Diaz,
C urso de guerra contrarevolucionaria: lucha contra el terrorismoy Servicio
de Informaciön del Ejercito (Buenos Aires, Escuela Superior de Guerra, 19
October 1961). This was a lecture delivered to selected army officials.
21 ib id .y p. 14.
.22 Juan Carlos Brid, ‘Quince anos de resistencia,’ N u e v o H o m b r e , 12
September 1971.
23 Diaz, Curso de g u erra , p. 13.
24 Directive, no. 1, February i960. Purportedly from Peron, circulated in
leaflet form.
25 This list was compiled from Diaz, C urso de guerray and from newspapers
of the time.
26 Diaz, Curso d e guerray p. 10.
27 ib id .y p. 14.
28 Roberto Carri, *La Resistencia peronista*.
29 Diaz, C urso d e guerray p. 14.
30 Brid, ‘Quince Anos*.
31 ‘Crönica por un resistente*.
32 See Richard Gillespie, Soldiers o f P erôn (Oxford, 1983).
33 Diaz, C urso de guerray p. 22.
34 See E n L u cb a y 2nd Epoch, June 1974.
35 See P e r ô n -C o o k e correspondencia , vol. 2 (Buenos Aires, 1973), PP- 372-3.
36 Interview with Alberto Bordaberry, Buenos Aires, October 1976.
37 Interview with Daniel Hopen, Buenos Aires, March 1974. Hopen had been
a student leader in the University of Buenos Aires and involved in support
operations.
38 Diaz, Curso d e guerra.
39 N oticias Grdficas , 9 January 1962.
40 L a N a c io n , 17 June 1961.
41 P alabra O b re ra , 16 March 1961.
42 Vicente Solano Lima claimed for example that ‘Peron did not want to take
part in the elections. He preferred to support another party. He had chosen
the Partido Conservador Popular.* C uestionario , no. 20, December 1974.
43 N oticias Grdficas , 11 February 1962.
44 N o ticias Grdficas , 11 January 1962.
45 N o ticias Grdficas , 13 January 1962.
46 Gazzera, ‘Nosotros los dirigentes*, p. 119.
47 Interview with Jorge Di Pascuale, Buenos Aires, February 1974.
7 The burocracia sindical

1 E l P opular , 4 December 1963.
2 The regional committees of the CGT had been returned to the unions by
Frondizi in 1958 as a first step in the process of normalisation of the CGT.
3 The principal independent unions were: print workers, La Fratemidad (the
locomen*s union), shop workers, merchant seamen, municipal employees,
paper workers, commercial travellers.
4 For details of congress see, D ocum entacion e Inform acion Laboral,
In fo rm e Especial, no. 1/2, 25 February 1963.
5 Interview with Alberto Bordaberry, October 1976. Bordaberry recalled
José Rucci, one of Vandor*s lieutenants and an activist in the Resistance,
organising the barra at meetings of the 62. Rucci would hand out money for
meals after the barra had performed well, i.e. after they had successfully
prevented any opposition voices from being heard.
6 See Carlos Diaz Alejandro, Essays on the Econom ic H isto ry o f the
A rg en tin e R epu blic (New Haven, 1970), pp. 2i8ff.
7 The Consejo Nacional de Desarrollo (CONADE) estimated that
unemployment increased from 2.7% in i960 to 7.5% in 1964.
Manufacturing production declined by 10% between 1961 and 1963. While
the CGT*s figures on the trend of real wages differed somewhat from that
of the government even the latter*s best case scenario allowed for stagnation
of real wages between i960 and 1964. See CGT, La C G T y el Plan de
L uchat cuarta etapa, Buenos Aires, November 1964, p. 22.
8 CGT, O ccupaciôn p o r 3,9 1 3,000 trabajadores de 11,000 establecim ientos ,
Buenos Aires, June 1964. For a general study of the Plan de Lucha see Guy
Bourdé, ‘Les occupations des usines en Argentine*, Le M ou vem en t Social,
April-June 197®-
9 Francois Gèze and Alain Labrousse, A rgen tin e: révolu tion et
co n trerévolu tion (Paris, 1975), p. 15 3 *
10 E sta tu to d e la Asociaciôn O brera T extil , Buenos Aires, 14 December 1966.
28o Notes to pages 167-78
11 Ministerio de Trabajo y Seguridad Social, Censo nacional de asociaciones
profesionales (Buenos Aires, 1965), table 16, p. 24.
12 E statuto del Sindicato U nido de Petroleros d e l E stado , Buenos Aires, 1965.
13 See Ministerio de Trabajo, C enso , table 13, p. 21.
14 ib id ., table 12, p. 21.
15 It is important to distinguish between the cuota sindical yasisten cia l and the
cuota extraordinaria. Since article 2 of law 14,455 established the principle
of the right to chose to be affiliated or not to a union there was no legal
obligation on a non-union member to pay basic union dues. However,
article 8 of law 14,250 of 1953 established the right of unions to negotiate
with employers the retention of the extraordinary quotas which were to be
specified in the collective contracts signed every two years. These were to
apply to union and non-union members alike. They were, however, to be
the result of bargaining with employers and were not an automatic right.
The legal rationale behind this was that since by law all wages and
conditions negotiated by the union were applicable to members and non-
members alike the union was entitled to recompense for its efforts from
those who benefited from the contracts it negotiated. The confusion on this
topic had some basis in the very vagueness of article 33 of law 14,455 which
gave the unions the right to receive dues retained by employers from
workers’ wages without specifying whether non-affiliates were to be
included. Resolution 253/60, 12 May i960, dealt with this confusion and
underlined the non-compulsory nature of the cuotas sindicales y
asistenciales.
16 Ministerio de Trabajo, C enso , p. 6.
17 ibid. , table 2, p. 12.
18 See Jorge Correa, Los jerarcas sindicales (Buenos Aires, 1972), for a
collection of the best-known cases.
19 M em oria y Balance , X I Congreso N acion al de la A O T y 22, 23 and 24
March, 1968.
20 ibid.
21 Gazzera, ‘Nosotros los dirigentes’, p. 116.
22 See Correa, Los jerarcas sindicaleSy pp. 84-90, for documentation of some
of the most blatant cases.
23 D ocum entacion e Inform acion L aboraly no. 70, January 1966.
24 Torre, E lp r o c e s o p o litic o in tem O y p. 13. As Torre points out, given the fact
that elections were held every two years in the fifteen-year period there
were 175 elections in these unions.
25 See A O T y July 1963; also P rim era Plan a , 27 November 1962.
26 Roberto Carri, ‘Sindicalismo de participaciön, sindicalismo de
liberaciön’, unpublished appendix to Sindicatos y p o d e r (Buenos Aires,
1967).
27 Descartesy 18 April 1962.
28 Villalön was a political maverick of rather obscure background. He was
rumoured to have good contacts with the Cubans, from whom he had a
concession to import Havana cigars. He had no background or base within
the traditional Peronist movement.
29 P rim era P lana , 19 November, 1963.
30 P rim era Plana , 7 July 1964.
31 ibid.
32 See Primera Plana, 23 March 1965.
33 Primera Plana, 6 April 1965. All these figures, apart from Framini, were
supporters of Vandor. Lascano was official head of the Justicialist Party.
José Alonso, the head of the CGT and one of the CG Ts delegates on the
body, while not a willing Vandorist, owed his position in the CGT to
Vandor’s support.
34 Primera Plana, 7 September 1965.
35 Primera Plana, 9 November 1965.
3 6 ibid.
37 The line up between the two 62 Organisations was fairly equal numerically,
the Vandorists keeping some 233 CGT delegates, the 62 de pie some 225.
The Vandorists did, however, have an advantage among those Peronist
unions who had not declared themselves one way or the other.
38 See Bourdé, ‘Les occupations des usines*.
39 V. L. Allen, The Sociology of Industrial Relations (London, 1971), p. 53.
40 For the calculations behind the Plan de Lucha see Documentacion e
Informaciôn Laboral, Informe Especial, no. 7, May 1964. Vandor used the
CGT and the 6 2 Organisations to follow a hard line and maintain strikes
and social conflict at the same time as he negotiated over the full acceptance
of Peronism within the political system.
41 The ‘juego imposible* is Guillermo O ’Donnell’s expression in Un juego
imposible: competicion y coaliciones entre partidos politicos en Argentina,
i9 ff-6 6 , Documento de Trabajo, Instituto Torcuato Di Telia (Buenos
Aires, 1972).
42 Interview with Enrique Pavön Pereyra, 1968, appeared in Siete Dias, no.
3I2’ l 9to
43 Letter 7y
Don Antonio Caparros, July 1969. In author’s files.
44 Cited in Walsh, Quién mato a Rosendof, p. 171. The weight of Peron's
personal condemnation was considerable. The weight such a condemnation
would carry even with a union leader of Vandor's independent resources
can be gauged by the fact that when Primera Plana ran a headline to an
article called ‘La gran carrera: Perön o Vandor*, Vandor immediately took
out full-page announcements in the press replying: ‘Vandor contesta:
Perön*.
8 Ideology and politics in Peronist unions

1 JusticialismOy October 1963. The document was issued by the Mesa
Coordinadora of the 62 Organisations on 23 August 1963.
2 ib id .
3 ib id .
4 ib id .
5 See, for example, the CGE programme of November 1962. This proposed a
new expansionist impulse based on state provision of credit facilities. This
contrasted sharply with the more orthodox concern with budget deficits
and control of inflation expressed by the traditional representative of large
industry, the Union Industrial Argentina. See Primera Plana, 13
November 1962.
6 CGT, Elporqué de la Semana de Protesta, May 1963.
7 CGT, La CGT en marcha hacia un cambio de estructuras, January 1965, p.
25 *
8 Primera Plana y 11 March 1965.
9 Documentation e Information Laboral, no. 29, July 1962.
10 CGT, La CGT convoca al pueblo a Cabildo Abierto, terceta etapa del Plan
de Luchat ]u\y 1964.
11 DinamiSy 13 January 1966.
12 Palabra Argentina, 4 February i960.
13 y4 OF, December 1961.
14 ‘Business unionism* was the term originally coined by R. F. Hoxie in Trade
Unionism in the United States (New York, 1923), and referred to the
exclusive concentration on collective bargaining, the negotiation over the
price of labour on the labour market. It specifically denied the validity of
participation in political or social activity, e.g. the provision of welfare
facilities.
15 CGT, Boletin Informativo Semanal de la CGT, no. 64, 7 June 1964.
16 For an example of the first reaction see Ricardo Otero, Augusto Vandor
(Buenos Aires, 1970). Otero who had been a relatively minor figure within
the UOM apparatus became Minister of Labour in 1973. For the
demonological approach, virtually any issue of the Peronist left press
would serve as an illustration. But see in particular the issue of La Causa
Peronista, 3 September 1974. Also El Descamisado, 10 February 1974,
describing the ‘execution* of Vandor in 1969. For the Peronist guerrilla
factions his killing was intended to be the exorcism Peronism needed to
purge its prime source of moral corruption and ideological degeneration.
18 ibid.t p. 114.
19 Walsh, Quién matô a Rosendofy p. 175.
20 ibid.y pp. 175-9.
21 Primera Plana, 19 December 1967.
22 The term clasista was a term generally used by the Peronists to refer to a
Marxist conception of politics and society. The term implied an emphasis
on class conflict and the organising of the working class in its own
independent party to achieve its specifically class goals.
23 Asociaciôn de Trabajadores de la Sanidad Argentina (ATSA), Curso de
capatitation sin d ica f 25 November 1966.
24 DinamiSy 13 January 1966.
25 Petrôleo ArgentinOy November/December 1965.
26 ibid.y May/June 1965.
27 See Primera Planaf 5 February 1964.
28 ibid., 11 May 1965.
29 P etrôleo ArgentinOy June/July 1966.
30 CGT, La CGT en marchay p. 65.
31 ibid.y p. 71.
32 Dtnam isy 14 July 1966.
33 CGT, Boletin In fo rm a tivo Semanaly no. 64, 7 June 1964.
34 ATSA, Curso d e capatitation sindicaly p. 17.
35 This was confirmed to me by Enrique Micö, Alonso's successor as leader
of the garment workers, in an interview in February 1974. The Catholic

provenance of some crucial strands in Peronist ideology has been
frequently commented on, not least by Peron himself.
36 Documentation e Information Laboral, no. 60, February 1965.
37 Primera Plana, 8 October 1963.
38 Interview with Sebastian Borro, Buenos Aires, February 1974.
39 Interview with Jorge Di Pascuale, Buenos Aires, February 1974.
40 Companero, 21 June 1963.
41 Primera Plana, 8 October 1963.
42 It was during the giro a la izquierda that Framini became the most
prominent duro figure, making a number of revolutionary-sounding
speeches emphasising that ‘there is no solution within the capitalist system’.
Part of Peron's ‘turn* was symbolised in a sympathetic attitude to the non-
Peronist left, especially the Communist Party and the Vanguard Socialist
Party. Also notable were some sympathetic statements about Castro and
the Third World in general. It was in this period that Cooke was urging
Peron to make Cuba his base.
43 For the programme of the MRP see ‘Peronismo: el exilio (1955-73),
Cuademos de Marcha, no. 71 (Montevideo, 1973).
44 Primera Plana, 11 August 1964. For details of the MRP conference as well
as a later critique by one of its leading participants, Gustavo Rearte, see En
Lucha, ôrgano del Movimiento Revolutionario 17 de octubre, no. 13,
December 1973.
45 Companero, 21 June 1963.
47 ibid., p. 190.
48 'A los companeros de la came, Agrupacion Blanca y Negra, Rosario,’
lener of Cooke’s, 1965, in mimeo in the author’s files.
49 Interview with Jorge Di Pascuale, Buenos Aires, February 1974; interview
with Sebastian Borro, Buenos Aires, February 1974. Borro’s response
when I asked how he came to terms with so many defeats and setbacks was
to shrug his shoulders and say: ‘Hay que tener fe en Peron y el pueblo.’
9 The Peronist union leaders under siege

1 For a discussion of the union leaders' calculations concerning the June coup
see Cam, Sindicatos y poder en la Argentina, pp. 145-7.
2 See Juan Carlos Portantiero, ‘Gases dominantes y crisis politica en la
Argentina actual* in Oscar Braun, ed., El capitalismo argentino en crisis
(Buenos Aires, 1973). Also see Guillermo O'Donnell, Estado y alianzas en
la Argentina, 19J6-1976, CEDES, doc. no. 5 (Buenos Aires, 1976).
3 For Ongama's economic policy see Oscar Braun, ‘Desarrollo del
capitalismo monopolista en la Argentina’ in Braun, ed., El capitalismo
argentino. Also see Peralta Ramos, Etapas de acumulation.
4 For an overview of the Ongania regime see Gregorio Selser, El Onganiato:
la llamaban Revolution Argentina, 2 vols. (Buenos Aires, 1973).
j For the impact of Krieger Vasena's economic policy on real wages see
Peralta Ramos, Etapas de acumulation.
6 The Cordoba events lack a definitive study. See Francisco Delich, Crisis y
protesta social:C ordoba, M ayo 1969 (Buenos Aires, 1970); Beba Balvé et
a l., Lucha de calles, lucba de clases (Buenos Aires, 1974).
7 For an analysis of intersectorial differences see Pablo Gerchunoff and Juan
Llach, ‘Capitalismo industrial, desarrollo asociado y distribuciön del
ingreso entre dos gobiernos peronistas, 1950-1972*, D esarrollo
Econom ico , vol. 15, no. 57 (1975), pp. 3“ 54-
8 The four Fiat plants, all established in the mid and late 1950s, were Fiat
Concord, Fiat Materfer, Grandes Motores Diesel in Cordoba, and Fiat
Concord in Buenos Aires. The Cordoba plants employed a total of 5,665
workers in the mid 1960s. ‘Informe preliminar sobre el conflicto en Fiat’,
Pasado y Presente , vol. 11, no. 2 (1965).
9 Peralta Ramos, Etapas de acumulaciôn, p. 147.
10 Juan Carlos Torre, Los sindicatos en elg o b iern o , 1973-1976 (Buenos Aires,
1983), p. 86.
11 For a more detailed analysis of the emergence of the automobile workforce
see Judith Evans and Daniel James, ‘Reflections on Argentine automobile
workers and their history* in Richard Kronish and Kenneth Mericle, eds.,
The Political E conom y o f the L atin A m erican M otor Vehicle In d u stry
(Cambridge, Mass., 1984).
12 Sitrac and Sitram were the acronyms used to refer to the Sindicato de
Trabajadores de Concord and the Sindicato de Trabajadores de Materfer,
respectively.
13 The V iborazo took its popular name from a boast made by the extreme
conservative governor of Cordoba appointed by Levingston who had
declared that he would root out subversives from Cordoba as one would
root out a nest of vipers.
14 I. M. Roldan, Sindicatos y protesta social en la A rgentina: un estudio de caso
el Sindicato de L u z y Fuerza de C o rdoba, 1969-1974 (Amsterdam, 1978),
p. 198.
15 ib id ., p. 274.
16 Interview with SMATA Cordoba leaders, Cordoba, August 1973.
17 Intersindical , no. 3, October 1972. The same was also true in the Cordoba
light and power union.
18 Interview with SMATA Cordoba leaders.
19 La Opinion, 13 July 1971.
20 Y a!, 29 June 1973.
21 Roldan, Sindicatos y p ro testa , p. 199.
22 Los Libros, no. 3 (1971). Also see Elizabeth Jelin, ‘Spontanéité et
Organisation dans le mouvement ouvrier: le cas de 1*Argentine, du Brésil et
du Mexique*, Sociologie du Travail, vol. 18, no. 2 (1976), pp. 13^-69.
23 A v a n za d a Socialista, January 1972.
24 Roldan, Sindicatos y p ro testa, p. 273.
25 For a stimulating critique of the opposition see Pasado y Presente, New
Series, vol. 1, no. 1 (1973).
26 For a general outline of the development of the guerrilla phenomenon in
Argentina see Richard Gillespie, Soldiers of Perôn (Oxford, 1982).
27 For the economy of the Peronist government, 1973-6 see Guido Di Telia,
P erôn-P eron, 1973-1976 (Buenos Aires, 1983); Adolfo Canitrot, ‘La
viabilidad economica de la democracia: un analisis de la experiencia
Notes to pages 24^-60 2 8 5
peronista, 1973-1976’, CEDES, Estudios Sociales , no. 11 (Buenos Aires,

ï 978).
28 For an account of the complex interrelationship between union leaders and
other forces in this period see Torre, Los sindicatos en el gobiern o .
29 See Elizabeth Jelin, ‘Los conflictos laborales en Argentina, 1973-1976’,
CEDES, Estudios Sociales , no. 9 (Buenos Aires, 1977).
10 Conclusion
1 Alvin Gouldner, ‘Metaphysical pathos and the theory of bureaucracy* in L.
A. Coser and B. Rosenberg, eds., Sociological T heory (New York, 1964), p.
5° 7 -
2 See for example Correa, Los jerarcas sindicales. Correa presents a
Communist Party analysis entirely devoted to the corruption, fraud and
violence of the Peronist leadership. The difference between his analysis and
that of the Peronist left was that Correa viewed these features as a largely
inherent consequence of Peronism’s nature as a movement and an ideology.
3 Robert Michels, P olitical Parties (Glencoe, 1958).
4 José Luis de Imaz, Los que m andan (Albany, 1976), p. 220.
5 Delich, Crisis y p ro testa social, p. 33.
6 See Richard Hyman, M arxism a n d the Sociology o f Trade Unionism
(London, 1972), for a résumé of this predominantly ‘pessimistic’
literature.
7 See V. L. Allen, M ilita n t T rade Unionism (London, 1976), p. 26.
8 See Hyman, M arxism , pp. 20-3.
9 Miguel Angel Garcia, P eronism o:desarrollo econômico y lucha de clases en
A rg en tin a (Llobregat, 1979), p. 125.
10 Sindicato Luz y Fuerza, Pautas para una politica nacional (Buenos Aires,
1970 )» P- 3 4 -
11 Cited in Peralta Ramos, Etapas de acum ulaciôn , p. 75.
12 C. Wright Mills, The N e w M en o f P ow er (New York, 1948), p. 7.
13 Rotundaro, R ea lid a d y cam bio , p. 388.
14 Hyman, M arxism , p. 37.
15 E. L. Wigham, W h a t’s w ron g w ith British unions f (London, 1961), p. 11,
cited in Hyman, M arxism , p. 23.
16 Juan Carlos Torre, E l proceso politico in tem o de los sindicatos argent inos,
Instituto Torcuato di Telia, Documento de Trabajo, no. 89 (Buenos Aires
.1974), p. 5.
17 Jean-Paul Sartre, C ritiq u e o f D ialectical Reason , vol. 1 (London, 1976), p.
683.
18 Jean-Paul Sartre, The C om m u nists a n d Peace (London, 1969), p. 194.
19 Claude Lefort, Q u é es la burocraciaf (Paris, 1970), p. 95.
20 Such an understanding is present in Jean-Paul Sartre’s work in the C ritiqu e
o f D ialectical Reason with his preoccupation with the emergence and
interplay of the fused group, the organised group and the institution and
the ever-present danger of the relapse into seriality, passivity. Sartre insists
too that the institutionalisation of individual praxis and the emergence of
bureaucracy respond to both personal and organisational needs, and can,
potentially, be reversed by the reemergence of individual praxis. Hence:
The working class is neither pure combativity, nor pure passive dispersal
nor a pure institutionalised apparatus.' Sartre, C ritiq u e , p. 690.
21 See Tom Nairn's assessment of the intrinsic duality of nationalism: ‘The
task of a theory of nationalism ... must be to embrace both horns of the
dilemma. It must be to see the phenomenon as a whole, in a way which rises
above these “positive" and “negative" sides ... Such distinctions do not
imply the existence of two brands of nationalism, one healthy and one
morbid. The point is that, as the most elementary comparative analysis will
show, all nationalism is both healthy and morbid. Both progress and
regress are inscribed in its genetic code from the start.' Tom Nairn, The
B reak-up o f B ritain (London, 1977), pp. 347-8.
22 Osvaldo Soriano, N o habrâ m as penas n i o lvid o (Buenos Aires, 1984).
Select bibliography
Newspapers, journals and reviews

Dates in general refer to years consulted and are not synonymous with the
actual publishing span. Most of the Peronist press published in the 1955-9
period operated under, at best, semi-clandestine conditions with many restric
tions. Hence publication was often sporadic and sometimes lasted for no more
than one or two issues.
A rg en tin a en M archa , i960, pro-Frondizi weekly

A sij 1970, weekly review
A v a n z a d a Socialista , 1972-74, weekly paper of Partido Socialista de los Traba-
jadores
A z u l y Blanco, 1956-8, nationalist, anti-Aramburu
L a Causa P eronista , 1974, Peronist Youth/Montoneros weekly
C h e , 1961, Partido Socialista de la Vanguardia weekly
C la rin , national daily newspaper
C om pan eroj 1963, pro -linea au ra , independent Peronist
C riso l d e l L ito ra l , 1955, independent, pro-Peronist newssheetproduced by
rank-and-file activists in Puerto General San Martin, Santa Fe
Cntica^ national daily newspaper
E l C u a ren ta , 1957, independent, pro-Peronist newssheet produced in Rosario
area.
C uestionarioj 1974, weekly review
L a D em o cra cia t i960, pro-Frondizi daily
E l Descam isadoy 1973-4, Peronist Youth/Montoneros weekly
D escartes , 1962, Peronist weekly controlled by the 62 Organisations
En Luchat organo d e l M o vim ien to R evolucionario 17 de octu bre , 1974, revol
utionary Peronist
F rente O b r e r o , 1956, Peronist
Intersindicaly 1972, pro-communist
JuancitOj 1957, Peronist barrio newssheet, Rosario
JusticialismOf 1963, Peronist weekly, pro-62 Organisations
L in ea D u ra , 1958, semi-official Peronist weekly, edited by John William
Cooke
Lucha O b r e r a , 1955, Trotskyist/Peronist
M a yo ria , 1957-9, pro-Frondizi weekly
2 8 7
2 8 8 Select bibliography
M ilitancia, 1973-4, revolutionary Peronist

La N a tio n , national daily newspaper
N e w York Tim es
N o titia s Grdficas, 1955-62, national daily newspaper
N u estro P u eblo, 1959-60, pro-Frondizi weekly
N u ev a E ra , 1955-8, monthly journal of the Argentine Communist Party
N u ev o H o m b re, 1971, pro-guerrilla weekly linked with Catholic left
Palabra A rgentina, 1955-9, pro-Peronist weekly
Palabra O b rera , 1958-63, Trotskyist, pro-Peronist
‘Peronismo: el exilio, 1955-73’, C u ardem os de M archa, no. 71, 1973 (special
issue)
El Popular, 1963-4, pro-communist weekly
Prim era Plana: historia d el peronism o, 1965-6
P ueblo U n id o , 1959, Peronist weekly
Q u é pasô en siete dias (Q u é ), 1955-9, pro-Frondizi weekly
La R a zô n , national daily
R e v ie w o f the R iv e r P late, weekly review
Siete D ias, 1973, weekly review
E lS o b era n o , 1959, pro-clandestine groups
U n idad O b rera , 1956, Trotskyist, pro-Peronist
La Vanguardia, 1955-7, daily newspaper of the Socialist Party
La V erdad, 1955-6, Trotskyist, pro-Peronist
Y a!, 1973, pro-Peronist Youth
U nion materials
Agrupaciön Obrera, ‘Obreros Argentinos*, rank-and-file leaflet, no date,
author’s files
Agrupamiento Sindical Argentino, leaflet, no title, no date, in author’s files
E l A lpargatero, i960, rank-and-file newspaper, Alpargatas textile plant, Bar-
racas, Buenos Aires
A O T , 1955-66, newspaper of the Asociaciön Obrera Textil
Boletin de H u elga, December 1956, Union Obrera Metalurgica
Confederation General de Trabajo, Boletin In fo rm a tivo Sem anal, 1963-6,
weekly information bulletin published under editorship of Luis Angheleri
C G T , 1955, newspaper of the GCT under Peronist regime. Three issues
appeared in September/October, 1955
E lp o rq u é de la Sem ana de P rotesta, May 1963, pamphlet
La C G T convoca a l p u eb lo a C abildo A bierto, tercera etapa d el Plan de
Lucha, July 1964, pamphlet
La C G T y el Plan de Lucha, cuarta etapa, November 1964, pamphlet
O cupatiôn p o r 3,913,000 trabajadores de 11,000 establetim ien tos, June
1964, pamphlet
La C G T en m archa hacia un cam bio de estructuras,]2.n\i*ry 1965, pamphlet
Curso de ca patitatiôn sindical, 25 November 1966, Asociaciön de Trabaja
dores de la Sanidad Argentina (ATSA)
D inam is, 1965-6, journal of Sindicato de Trabajadores de Luz y Fuerza
D ocu m en tation e In form ation L aboral, 1960-6, monthly bulletin of union
affairs, edited Leonardo Dimase
Select bibliography 2 8 9
D ocu m en tor d el Plenario N acion al de las 62 O rganizacion es , December 1959

D ocu m en tos d e l Plenario N acion al de las 62 O rganizacion es , 20 May i960
E statu to de la Asociacion O b rera T extil , 14 December 1966
E statu to d e l Sindicato U n ido de P etroleros d el E stado , 1965
M em oria y Balance , X I Congreso N acion al de la A O T , 22, 23 and 24 March
1968
E l O b rero F erroviario , 1955, paper of Union Ferroviaria
P aatas p a ra una p olitica nacional, Sindicato de Trabajadores de Luz y Fuerza,
1970
P etrôleo A rg en tin o , 1960-6, paper of the Federaciön de Sindicatos Unidos de
Petroleros del Estado (SUPE)
E l T ra b a ja d o r de la C a m e , 1958-60, paper of the Federaciön de Trabajadores
de la Industria de la Came
E l V itivin icola , 1957, paper of the Union Obrera Vitivimcola
Official governm ent sources

Banco Central de la Naciön, Origen del producto y distribuciön del ingreso,
1950-1969, suplemento del boletin estadistico, no. 1, January 1971
CGE-Consejo Federal de Inversiones, programs conjunto, vol. 3, 1964
Consejo Nacional del Desarrollo, Plan nacional de desarrollo, Buenos Aires,
. .I97?
Ministerio de Trabajo y Prevision, N u ev o régim en de rem uneraciones y de las
convenciones C olectivas de trabajo, Buenos Aires, 1956
L au do d e l trib u n a l a rb itra l , no. 63/1956, Buenos Aires, 1956
Ministerio de Trabajo y Seguridad Social, Conflictos de trabajo , Buenos Aires,
1961
C o n v e n d o n colectiva de la industria tex til , no. 155/1960, Buenos Aires,
i960
C o n v e n d o n colectiva de la industria m etalurgica , no. 55/1960, Buenos
Aires, i960
Censo n a d o n a l de asociaciones profesionales, Buenos Aires, 1965
Ministerio de Trabajo, A sociadones profesionales de trabajadores , law 14,255,
decree 969/66 and 2477/70, Buenos Aires, 1970
‘Report of the proceedings of the Congreso N a d o n a l de P rodu ctividad y Bie
nestar Social*, Buenos Aires, March 1955, H echos e Ideas , 1955
Servicio Intemacional de Publicaciones Argentinas, ‘Emancipation of the
Workers*, Buenos Aires, 1953
Interviews
Herminio Alonso, Buenos Aires, December 1976
Alberto Belloni, Buenos Aires, January/February 1974
Alberto Bordaberry, Buenos Aires, October 1977
Sebastian Borro, Buenos Aires, February 1974
Tito Dragovitch, Buenos Aires, September 1976
Lautaro Ferlini, Buenos Aires, November/December 1976
Don Ramiro Gonzalez, Rosario, November 1976
Ernesto Gonzalez, Buenos Aires, February 1974
Daniel Hopen, Buenos Aires, March 1974
Enrique Micö, Buenos Aires, February 1974
Jorge Di Pasquale, Buenos Aires, February 1974
Secondary sources: books, articles, pamphlets

Allen, V. L., Militant trade unionism, London, 1971
Bourdieu, Pierre, Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge, 1977
Braun, Oscar, El capitalismo argentino en crisis, Buenos Aires, 1973
Brid, Juan Carlos, ‘Quince anos de resistencia*, Nuevo Hombre, 8 August
1971, 12 September 1971
Cabo, Dardo, and Roa, Ricardo, ‘Duros y negociadores en el movimiento
peronista’, Nuevo Hombre, 15 September 1971
Canton, Dario, Elecciones y partidos politicos en la Argentina, Buenos Aires,
El 1973 ,
parlamento argentino en épocas de cambio, 1890, 1916 y 1946 , Buenos
Aires, 1966
Carri, Roberto, Sindicatos y poder en Argentina, Buenos Aires, 1967
‘La Resistencia peronista: crönica por los resistentes*, Antropologia del
Tercer Mundo, June 1972
Cham, Marilena, Cultura e democracia, o discurso competente e outras falas,
Sao Paulo, 1982
Cimazo, Jacinto, and Grunfeld, José, Luis Danussi en el movimiento social y
obrero argentino, Buenos Aires, 1976
Ciria, Alberto, Parties and Power in Modem Argentina, 1930-1946, Albany,
1969
Perôn y el justicialismo, Buenos Aires, 1974
Colom, Eduardo, El 17 de octubre, la revoluciôn de los descamisados, Buenos
Aires, 1946
Cooke, John William, ‘Peronismo y lucha de clases’ Cristianismo y Revolu
ciôn, October/November 1966
Correa, Jorge, Los jerareas sindicales, Buenos Aires', 1972
‘Crönica por un resistente: crönicas de la Resistencia*, Antropologia del
Tercer Mundo, August 1972
Delich, Francisco, Crisis y protesta social: Cordoba, mayo 1969 , Buenos
Aires, 1970
Diaz, Hamilton Alberto, Curso de guerra contrarevolucionaria: lucha contra el
terrorismo, Servicio de Informaciön del Ejército, Escuela Superior de
Guerra, Buenos Aires, 19 October 1961
Doyon, Louise, ‘El crecimiento sindical bajo el peronismo*, Desarrollo Econo-
mico, vol. 15, no. 57 (1975), PP* 151—61
‘Conflictos obreros durante el régimen peronista, 1946-1955*, Desarrollo
Econômicoy vol. 17, no. 67 (1977), pp. 437-73
Economic Commission for Latin America, Economic Development and
Income Distribution in Argentina, New York, 1969
Evans, Judith, ‘Tango and popular culture in Buenos Aires*, paper presented to
American Historical Association conference, Washington, 1980
Evans, Judith, and James, Daniel, ‘Reflections on Argentine automobile
workers and their history*, in Richard Kronish and Kenneth Mericle, eds.,
Select bibliography 291
The Political Economy of the Latin American Motor Vehicle Industry,

Cambridge, Mass., 1984
Fayt, Carlos, La naturaleza del peronismo, Buenos Aires, 1967
Franco, Luis, Biografta patria, Buenos Aires, 1958
Frigerio, Rogelio, Los cuatro anos, Buenos Aires, 1962
Introduction a los problemas nationales, Buenos Aires, 1965
Frondizi, Arturo, Petrôieo y politico,, 3rd edn, Buenos Aires, i960
Politica economica national, Buenos Aires, 1963
Galvez, Manuel, En el mundo de los seres reales, Buenos Aires, 1955
Garcia, Miguel Angel, Peronismo: desarrollo econômico y lucha de clases en
Argentina, Llobregat, 1979
Gazzera, Miguel, ‘Nosotros los diligentes’ in Norberto Ceresole and Miguel
Gazzera, Peronismo: autocritica y perspectivas, Buenos Aires, 1970
Germani, Gino, Politica y sotiedad en una época de transition, Buenos Aires,
1962
‘El roi de los obreros y de los migrantes internos en los origenes del peron
ismo*, Desarrollo Econômico, vol. 13, no. 51 (1973), pp. 435-88
Gèze, Francois, and Labrousse, Alain, Argentine: revolution et contrerévolu-
tion , Paris, 1975
Gobello, José, Dictionario lunfardo y otros términos antiguos y modemos
usados en Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, 1975
Goldar, Emesto, ‘La literatura peronista’ in Gonzalo Cardenas et al., El
peronismo, Buenos Aires, 1969
Gouldner, Alvin, ‘Metaphysical pathos and the theory of bureaucracy’ in L. A.
Coser and B. Rosenburg, eds., Sociological Theory, New York, 1964
Halperin Donghi, Tulio, ‘Algunas observaciones sobre Germani, el surgi-
miento del peronismo y los migrantes intemos*, Desarrollo Economico,
vol. 15, no. 56 (1975)» PP- 765-81
Hyman, Richard, Marxism and the Sociology of Trade Unionism, London,
1972
Imaz, José Luis de, Los que mandan, Albany, 1976
Iscaro, Rubens, Historia del Movimiento Sindical, vol. 1, Buenos Aires, 1974
Jelin, Elizabeth, ‘Los conflictos laborales en Argentina, 1973-1976*, CEDES,
Estudios Sociales, no. 9, Buenos Aires, 1977
Laclau, Emesto, Politics and ideology in Marxist theory, London, 1977
Lefort, Claude, Qué es la burocraciaf Paris, 1970
Linie, Walter, ‘Political integration in Peronist Argentina*, Ph.D. thesis, Uni
versity of Cambridge, 1971
‘La organizaciôn obrera y el estado peronista*, Desarrollo Econômico, vol.
19, no. 75 (1979), pp. 331-76 ,
Llach, Juan José, ‘El Plan Pinedo de 1940: su sigmhcaciön histônca y los ori
genes de la economia politica del peronismo*, Desarrollo Econômico,
vol. 23, no. 92 (1984), PP- 5 15—58
Luna, Felix, El 4y. crônica de un aho detisivo, Buenos Aires, 1969
Alvear, Buenos Aires, 1958
Mafud, Julio, Sotiologta del peronismo, Buenos Aires, 1972
La vida obrera en la Argentina, Buenos Aires, 1976
Malion, Richard and Sourrouille, Juan, Economie Policy Making in a Conflict
Society, Cambridge, Mass., 1975
Matsushita, Hiroschi, E l m o vim ien to obrero argentine), 1930-194$: su sproyec-
ciones en los origenes d e lp e ro n ism o , Buenos Aires, 1983
Michels, Robert, P olitical Parties , Glencoe, 1958
Murmis, Miguel, and Portantiero, Juan Carlos, ‘El movimiento obrero en los
origenes del peronismo’, Estudios sobre los origenes d e l peron ism o , vol.
i, Buenos Aires, 1972
‘Crecimiento industrial y alianzas de clase en la Argentina, 1930-40’, E stu
dios sobre los origenes d el peronism o, vol. 1, Buenos Aires, 1972
O ’Donnell, Guillermo, Un juego im posible: com peticiôn y coaliciones entre
pa rtid o s politicos en la A rgen tin a, 1933-1966 , Documento de Trabajo,
Instituto Torcuato di Telia, 1972
Pelletieri, Osvaldo, Enrique Santos D iscépolo : obra po ética , Buenos Aires,
1976
Pena, Milciades, El peronism o: selecciôn de docum entos para su historia,
Buenos Aires, 1973
Peralta Ramos, Monica, Etapas de acum ulaciôn y alian zas de clase en la A rg en
tina, 1930-70, Buenos Aires, 1972
Perelman, Angel, C om o hicimos el 17 de octubre, Buenos Aires, 1961
Perôn, Juan Domingo, La fu e rz a es el derecho de las bestias , Montevideo,
1957
Letter to the 62 Organisations, 25 June i960, published as pamphlet by the
62 Organisations
Interview with Enrique Pavön Pereyra, 1968, published in Siete Dias, no.
31*» 1973
Letter to Don Antonio Caparros, July 1969
P erô n -C o o k e correspondencia , 2 volumes, Buenos Aires, 1972
Prieto, Ramon, El P acto , Buenos Aires, 1965
Real, Juan José, 3 0 anos de historia argen tin a , Buenos Aires, 1962
Reyes, Cipriano, C om o yo hice el 17 de octu bre , Buenos Aires, 1973
Rock, David, Politics in A rgentina: the rise a n d fa ll o f Radicalism , 1890-1930 ,
Cambridge, 1975
Roldan, I. M., Sindicatos y pro testa social en la A rgèntina: un estudio de caso el
Sindicato de L u z y Fuerza de C ô rdoba, 1969-1974 , Amsterdam, 1978
Rotundaro, Ruben, R ea lid a d y cam bio en el sindicalism o , Buenos Aires,
1972
Roxborough, Ian, ‘Unity and diversity in Latin American history’, Journal of
Latin American History, vol. 16, pan 1 (1984), pp. 1-26
Sartre, Jean-Paul, Critique of Dialectical Reason, vol. 1, London, 1976
The Communists and Peace, London, 1969
Senén Gonzalez, Santiago, and Torre, Juan Carlos, Ejército y sindicatos,
Buenos Aires, 1969
Stedman Jones, Gareth, Languages o f Class: studies in English w orkin g class
h isto ry ’, Cambridge, 1984
Tamarin, David, The A rgen tin e L abor M o vem en t, 1930-1943: a stu d y in the
origins o f P eronism , Albuquerque, 1985
Torre, Juan Carlos, E l proceso politico in tem o de los sindicatos argentinos ,
Instituto Torcuato di Telia, Documento de Trabajo, no. 89, Buenos Aires,
1974 .
Los sindicatos en el g o b ie m o , 1973-1976 , Buenos Aires, 1983
Select bibliography 2 9 3
Vigo, Juan M., La vida por Perôn: crônicas de la Resistencia, Buenos Aires,
Ï 973
Vinas, Ismael, Orden y progreso: Analisis del frondicismo, Buenos Aires, i960
Walsh, Rodolfo, Quién maté a Rosendo?, Buenos Aires, 1969
Williams, Raymond, Marxism and Literature, Oxford, 1977
Wright, Mills, C., The New Men of Power, New York, 1948
Zuvekas Jr, Clarence; ‘Economic growth and income distribution in post-war
Argentina’, Inter-American Economic Affairs, vol. 20, no. 3 (1966), pp.
l 9~}9
‘Argentine economic policy, 1958-1962: the Frondizi government’s devel
opment plan*, Inter-American Economic Affairs, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 45-75
Index
Agrupaciön Obrera, 93 B e raz a te g u i, 77

Agrupaciön Peronista de la Resistencia B erisso , 5 0 ,6 4 ,1 1 5 ,1 2 2
Insurreccional (APRI), 144 B la jaq u is, D o m in g o , 1 2 5 ,2 5 0 ,2 5 7
Agrupamiento Sindical Argentino, 92 B leg er, D a v id , 116
Ahumada, Ciro, 146 B lo c h , E rn s t, 24
Alonsojosé, 114,154,163,181,198, B o rro , S eb astian , 4 3 ,7 2 ,7 3 ,8 7 ,1 1 3 ,1 1 4 ,
199,201-3 passim , 207,240 1 2 0 ,1 3 0 ,1 3 3 ,1 5 4 ,1 5 6 ,1 6 3 ,2 0 4 ,2 0 7 ,
El Alp argâtero, 137 208
Alsogaray, Alvaro, 116,138,152 B o u rd ie u , P ie rre , 30
de Alvar, Manuel T., 1j b o u rg e o is ie , 95
Alvarez, Jorge, 177 B ra m u g lia , A ttilio , 154
anarchists, 28 B rid , J u a n C a rlo s, 7 2 ,7 9 ,1 4 4 ,1 4 8
An tun Julio, 177 B u e n o s A ire s, 8 ,1 2 ,1 5 ,2 7 - 9 passim, 31 ,
Aramburu, General Pedro Eugenio, 47, 50» S2» 5 3 * 5 5 »67» 70» 7 7 » 78» 9 2» * *4 »
53» 54.^1.75» iog»1 3 0 »13*. M9. i7°» 1 2 4 ,1 2 5 ,1 2 7 ,143” ^ passim, 1 4 8 ,1 5 0 ,
153” 5 passim, 1 5 7 ,1 6 7 ,1 6 8 ,1 7 0 ,1 7 8 ,
. 2°7
arbitration, see Emergency Arbitration 1 7 9 ,2 1 9 ,2 2 2 ,2 2 4 ,2 2 7 ,2 2 8 ,2 3 3 ,2 3 9 ,
Tribunal 2 4 2 ,2 4 5 ,2 5 1 ,2 6 4
armed forces, 1,4,49,50,70,80,106,116, b u re a u c ra tis a tio n , 162
120,121,127,149» 15*» 154» *55» i*S» burocracia sindical, 163,229
177,183,196,199,201,202,220-3 b u s d riv e rs , 67
passim , 233,236-8 passim , 249,250
Association de Trabajadores del Estado, camiseta, 184,185
121 C a m p o ra , H e c to r , 24 2 -3
Associaciön Obrera Textil, 136,166,169 c a p ital, 3 4 ,4 8 ,9 0 ,9 3 ,1 0 3 ,1 0 7 - 8 , 110,
automobile workers, 222,224,226,228, h i , 1 1 8 ,1 6 4 ,18 8—90 passim, 2 1 7
.230,232-3 c a p ita lis m ,4 0 ,5 9 ,6 0 ,1 9 0 ,2 3 1 ,2 5 2 ,2 5 3 ,2 6 1
Avellaneda, 15,50,70,71,77,115,120, C a rd o s o , E le u te rio , 1 1 4 ,1 2 0 -1 ,1 2 2 ,1 2 3 ,
114-6 passim, 161,163,180-1,197 1 2 8 ,1 3 0 -3 passim, 253
Declaration of, 20 C a s tro , F id e l, 150
C a s tro , J o sé N o rm a n d o , 146
Bajo Flores, 11 j C a ta m a rc a , 152
bank workers, 44,75 C a th o lic n a tio n a lists, 47
Barcelö, Don Alberto, 15 C a th o lic s , 48
Barracas, 137 C e n tra l de O p e ra c io n e s d e la R esisten cia
Barrios, Americo, 15 3 ( C O R ), 1 4 3 -7 passim
Begnis, Sylvestre, 177 C e r r u tti C o s ta , L u is B ., 4 4 ,4 6 ,4 9 ,5 2
BeUoni, Alberto, 43,53,73,121,128,129, C h a c o , 179
2S7 Chamber of Metal Working Industries,
Bengoa, General, 46,49,80 6 0 ,6 2
195
2 9 6 Index
see also F e d e ra c iö n A rg e n tin a d e la C G T P a seo C o lo n , 219
In d u s tria M e ta lü rg ica , m etal C G T U n ic a e In tra n s ig e n te , 73
w o rk e rs , U n io n O b r e r a M e ta lü rg ica C o n fe d e ra c iö n G e n e ra l E c o n ö m ic a
(U O M ) (C G E ) , 1 8 9 , 144-6passim, 253
C h a m b e r o f S h o e m a k in g In d u s trie s , 6 5 C o n fe d e r a tio n o f O r th o d o x P e r o n is t
c h u rc h , 1 0 9 ,12 1 , 196,201 G ro u p in g s , 204
c itiz e n s h ip , 1 4 ,1 5 -1 8 passim, 3 7 ,2 6 3 C o n fin d u s tria co n g re ss , 58
civil c o m m a n d o s, 4 4 ,4 6 ,4 9 ,5 1 ,7 8 - 8 2 C o n g re s s o f P r o d u c tiv ity , 5 7 ,5 8 ,6 0 ,6 1
passim, 8 5 ,8 6 ,1 4 3 ,1 4 4 ,1 4 6 -8 C o n s e jo C o o r d in a d o r y S u p e rv is o r del
passim, 150 ^ P e ro n is m o , 1 0 4 ,1 4 3 ,1 4 4 ,1 5 3 ,1 7 6
civil s erv an ts, 75 c o n s tr u c tio n w o rk e rs , 166
Clasismo, Sindicalismo de Liberation, C o o k e , J o h n W illia m , 7 4 ,8 3 - 6 ,1 2 9 ,1 4 9 ,
2 3 1 ,2 3 2 ,2 3 4 ,2 3 5 ,2 4 0 ,2 4 5 ,2 4 7 ,2 6 4 15 0 - 1 ,1 8 6 ,1 8 7 ,2 0 9 - 1 1 passim, 263
class, 9 0 ,1 0 8 ,1 9 0 ,2 0 8 -9 ,2 3 2 ,2 4 1 ,2 4 9 , coordinadoras, 248
2 5 9 ,261 C o r d o b a , 8 0 ,1 4 5 ,1 6 8 ,1 7 0 ,2 1 5 ,2 2 1 - 4
class c o n flic t, 3 4 -5 ,3 6 ,9 9 ,1 1 6 ,1 3 3 , passim, 2 2 6 - 3 1passim, 2 3 4 ,2 3 6 ,2 4 5
15 0 ,1 8 7 ,1 8 9 ,2 0 9 ,2 4 6 ,2 6 2 Cordobazo, 2 2 2 - 3 ,22*>» 2 3 3 » 2 3 5 * 2 3 *>>
class h a rm o n y , 3 5 ,3 9 ,2 5 3 ,2 6 0 ,2 6 2 2 3 8 ,2 4 0
m id d le class, 1 4 ,2 2 ,4 0 ,2 3 8 ,2 4 0 Crisol del Litoral, 92
w o rk in g class, 1 -4 passim, 8 -9 ,1 1 - 1 4 El Cuarenta, 8 9 ,9 3
passim, 17-40passim, 4 8 ,5 2 -4 C u b a n re v o lu tio n , 1 4 9 -5 1 passim, 210,
passim, 5 6 ,5 8 —6 1 , passim, 6 3 ,6 5 -7 0 211
passim, 76,8 0 ,8 5 ,8 6 ,8 8 - 9 8 passim, cuerpo de delegados, 161
1 0 0 ,1 0 4 ,1 0 8 , i io-i6passim, 118-22
passim, 1 2 5 ,1 3 1 ,1 3 2 ,1 4 1 ,1 4 3 ,1 4 7 , D a n u s s i, L u is, 2 7 ,2 8
1 5 1 ,1 5 6 ,15 7 ,1 6 5 ,1 7 5 ,1 8 2 ,1 8 3 ,1 8 7 , década infame, I4~i7passim, 2 4 ,2 5 ,2 7 ,
1 9 6 ,2 0 3 ,2 0 6 ,2 0 8 ,2 1 1 ,2 1 7 ,2 1 8 ,2 2 0 , 3*
2 2 3 ,2 2 7 -8 ,2 3 1 - 5 passim, 2 4 1 ,2 4 5 -9 D e c re e 9 6 9 ,1 9 3 ,1 9 9 ,2 1 8
passim, 2 5 1 ,2 5 2 ,2 5 4 , 2^6-64passim D e c re e 2 6 2 8 ,1 4 6
cogestion, 190 D e c re e 2 6 3 9 ,1 4 6
c o llectiv e b a rg a in in g , 5 4 ,1 5 1 ,2 1 9 ,2 2 4 , D e c re e 2 7 3 9 ,6 1 ,6 2 -3
2 2 5 ,2 3 9 ,2 4 6 ,2 5 4 D e c r e e 4 i 6 i ,9 5
C o m a n d o del E g a d o N a c io n a l, 181 D e c re e 7 1 0 7 ,7 2
C o m a n d o N a c io n a l d e C o m m u n ic a c io n e s , D e c re e 9 2 7 0 ,8 6
144 D e lic h , F ra n c is c o , 251
C o m a n d o N a c io n a l P e ro n is ta , 149,151 d e m o n s tra tio n (17 O c to b e r 1945), 9 ,3 2 - 3
C o m a n d o Sin dical, 73 desarrollista, 1 0 5 -9 passim, 1 1 2 ,1 1 6 ,1 1 9 ,
Comisiôn Intersyndical, 7 4 ,7 5 ,8 3 ,8 4 151,201
c o m m u n is m , 2 ,3 2 d e v e lo p m e n ta lis m , 107-11 passim, 116,
C o m m u n is t P a rty , 12,68 11 8 ,1 3 0 ,1 5 0 ,1 6 4 ,2 0 0 ,2 1 7
c o m m u n is ts , 9 , 1 2 ,2 0 ,2 8 ,4 8 ,6 7 ,7 4 - 6 D ic k m a n n , E n r iq u e , 37
passim , 8 3 ,1 0 3 ,1 0 4 ,1 1 4 ,1 3 8 ,1 6 3 , D ire c c iö n N a c io n a l d e S e g u rid a d , 77
1 8 1 ,2 3 3 D is c é p o lo , E n r iq u e S a n to s , 7 ,2 6 ,2 7
C o n fe d e r a c iö n G e n e ra l d e T ra b a jo D o c k S u d , 115
( C G T ) , 9 , 1 0 ,1 2 ,1 7 ,4 3 - 9 passim,
5 1 -5 passim, 6 8 ,7 3 - 5 passim, 8 4 ,8 6 , e c o n o m ic n a tio n a lis m , 8 9 ,9 0 ,1 0 9 ,1 1 0 ,
8 7 ,1 0 4 ,1 0 6 ,1 2 4 ,13 1 - 2 ,1 4 8 ,15 1, 112
162-5 passim, 1 7 8 ,1 7 9 ,1 8 1 ,1 8 9 -9 1 e c o n o m y , 7 - 8 ,1 9 ,5 6 ,6 8 - 9 ,8 9 ,1 0 4 , 1 0 7 ,
passim, 1 9 3 ,1 9 8 -2 0 1 passim, 203, 1 1 0 ,1 16-1%passim, 1 2 0 ,1 2 2 ,1 6 3 - 4 ,
2 1 8 -1 9 ,2 2 0 -1 ,2 2 4 ,2 2 8 ,2 3 6 ,2 4 0 , 1 8 3 ,1 8 8 ,1 8 9 ,2 1 7 -1 8 ,2 2 1 ,2 3 1 ,2 4 4 ,
2 4 2 ,2 4 4 ,2 4 5 ,2 5 3 ,2 5 5 2 4 8 ,2 5 4
C G T A u té n tic a , 7 3 ,1 4 8 ,1 5 4 E jé rc ito R e v o lu c io n a rio d e l P u e b lo , 238
C G T d e lo s A rg e n tin o s , 240 e le c tio n s , 1 2 ,1 4 - 1 5 ,2 9 ,6 8 ,8 5 - 6 ,1 5 2 - 7 ,
C G T N e g r a , 7 3 ,8 2 1 6 5 ,1 7 5 -9 passim, 1 8 1 ,1 8 3 ,1 9 9 ,2 0 3 ,
Index *97
2 0 5 ,2 3 6 -8 passim, 2 4 0 ,2 4 2 ,2 4 3 ,2 4 5 g a rm e n t w o rk e rs , 4 4 ,7 5 ,1 1 4 ,1 5 4 ,2 0 3
u n io n e le c tio n s , 4 4 - 6 ,6 5 ,7 4 ,7 5 ,8 4 ,8 7 , see also te x tile w o rk e rs
1 0 6 ,1 1 3 ,1 2 3 - 4 ,1 2 6 ,1 2 8 ,1 7 0 - 3 ,1 7 8 , d e G a u lle , G e n e ra l C h a rle s, 182
1 9 7 -8 ,2 3 0 ,2 5 6 G a y , L u is, 17
e le c tric ity w o rk e rs , see lig h t a n d p o w e r G a z z e ra , M ig u el, 5 3 ,7 2 ,1 5 5 ,1 5 7 ,1 7 0 ,
w o rk e rs 176, 177* 194,196
e lite , co n se rv a tiv e , 1 4 -1 5 ,3 0 ,3 3 ,3 9 ,4 0 , G e lb a rd , J o sé , 5 7 ,6 0 ,1 3 9 ,2 4 4
93**63 ‘G e n e ra l I n s tru c tio n s f o r L e a d e rs ’
Emancipation of the Workers, 3 j (P e ro n ), 81
E m e r g e n c y A rb itr a tio n T rib u n a l, 5 5,63 G e rm a n i, G in o , 2 ,1 3
E n s e n a d a , 5 0 ,115 G o b e llo ,J o s é , 31
G o ld a r, E rn e s to , 2 5 ,3 6
F e d e ra c iô n A rg e n tin a d e la In d u s trie G ô m e z , A le ja n d ro , 105 ,1 0 6
M e ta lu rg ic a , 140 G o m is , P e d ro , 1 2 1 ,1 3 0 ,1 9 2
see also C h a m b e r o f M e ta l-W o rk in g gorila, 9 6 ,9 7 ,1 0 6 ,1 5 5 ,2 2 0
I n d u s trie s , m e ta l w o rk e rs , U n io n G o u ld n e r, A lv in , 250
O b r e r a M e ta lu rg ic a (U O M ) Gran Acuerdo Nacional, 2 3 6 ,2 3 7 ,2 3 9
F e d e ra c iô n d e la In d u s tria T e x til g riev an ce p ro c e d u re s , 141
A rg e n tin a (F IT A ), 136 g u e rrillas, 3 ,1 4 9 ,1 5 0 ,2 1 0 ,2 1 1 ,2 3 6 - 8
see also te x tile w o rk e rs passim, 2 4 0 ,2 4 6
F e d e ra c iô n O b r e r a R e g io n a l A rg e n tin a G u e v a ra , C h e , 149
(F O R A ), 8 G u id o , J o sé M aria, 1 5 5 ,1 6 4 ,1 6 5
F e d e ra tio n o f H e a lth Service W o rk e rs , 117
F e rn a n d e z , A v e lin o , 1 2 3,148 heptunvirato, 177
F ie rr o , M a r tin , 23 H e rre ra s , C a s ild o , 242-3
fin a n c e s: u n io n fin a n c e s, 1 6 7 -7 0 ,1 7 3 -4 , H o r a d e l P u e b lo , 237
19 1 ,2 5 8 h o s p ita l w o rk e rs , 72
focismo, 2 1 0 ,2 1 1
F r a m in i, A n d re s , 4 4 ,4 6 ,4 9 ,5 2 ,7 3 ,1 1 3 , id e o lo g y
1 1 4 ,1 2 4 ,1 2 7 ,1 5 3 ,1 5 4 ,1 6 1 ,1 7 7 -9 b o u rg e o is , 2
passim, 1 9 2 ,2 0 4 ,2 0 7 P e ro n is t, 2 ,9 2 ,9 4 -1 0 0 ,1 0 6 ,1 0 9 - 1 0 ,
F r a n c o , L u is, 2 2 -3 1 1 2 ,1 1 6 ,11 7 ,1 8 j~9passim, 1 9 1 ,1 9 3 ,
F r e n te E m a n c ip a d o ra , 51 1 9 4 ,2 0 2 ,2 0 9 ,2 6 0 ,2 6 3
F r e n te J u stic ia lis ta d e L ib e ra c iô n V a n d o ris t, 194-5 ; see also V a n d o ris m
(F R E J U L I), 2 3 7 ,2 4 2 Illia, A r tu r o , 1 6 5 ,1 7 4 ,1 7 5 ,1 8 1 ,1 9 3 ,
F r e n te N a c io n a l y P o p u la r, 165 2 1 5 -1 7passim, 224,225
F re s c o , M a n u e l, 15 d e Im a z , J o s é L u is, 251
F r ig e r io , R o g e lio , 1 0 3 ,1 0 4 , 106-9 passim, in c e n tiv e sch em es, 5 6 -7 ,5 8 ,1 3 5 ,1 3 8 - 9 ,
116 1 4 1 ,2 3 0 ,2 5 8
F r ig o rific o L a N e g ra , 124 In d e p e n d e n ts , 143
F rig o rific o N a c io n a l, 113 in d u s tria lis a tio n , 19-21 passim, 10 7 -1 0
F f o n d iz i, A r tu r o , 4 ,7 6 ,8 5 -7 passim, passim, 164,253
toy-7 passim, 109-iypassim, 116-18 in d u s try , 7 - 8 ,5 5 -7 passim
passim, 1 2 7 ,1 2 9 -3 1passim, 150-2 In ig u e z , G e n e ra l M ig u el, 5 0 ,1 4 3 -4 ,1 4 7
passim, 1 5 5 ,1 5 7 .1 6 4 ,1 7 7 ,1 8 3 ,2 2 3 , in s titu tio n a l p ra g m a tis m , 130,2 5 3
2 2 4 ,2 2 6 ,2 3 1 ,2 5 6 in te g ra tio n is m , 1 0 8 ,1 3 2 ,1 3 3 ,1 4 2 ,1 4 3 ,
F u e rz a s A rm a d a s P e ro n is ta s , 238 1 5 2 ,1 5 5 ,1 7 4 ,2 5 6 ,2 5 9 ,2 6 0
F u e rz a s A rm a d a s R e v o lu c io n a ria s , 238 in te rn a l c o m m is sio n s , 1 3 9 -4 2 passim
Iz z e tta , G e ro n im o , 179
G a llo , C a r lo s , 177
G a rc ia , A lb e r to S e ru , 181 J o c k e y C lu b , 20
G a rc ia , R o b e r to , 154 J o n e s , G a re th S te d m a n , 13,21
G a rc ia , R o la n d o , 154 J o n s c h .J u a n , 133,163
G a rc ia , R o s e n d o , 250 Juancito, 9 7 ,9 8
298 Index
J u n in , 79 7 3 , 11 3 ,1 1 4 ,1 2 0 ,1 2 2 ,1 2 3 ,1 2 9 ,1 3 0 ,
J u n ta A se s o ra G re m ia l, 5 5 204
J u n ta C o o r d in a d o ra N a c io n a l, 180,181 M e n d o z a , 1 4 5 ,1 4 6 ,1 4 8 ,1 4 9 ,1 5 2 ,1 8 1 ,
J u n u d e P e tro le ro s , 1 0 3,104 186 ,2 3 8
J u n ta R e o r g a n iz a d o ra , 205 M esa A n a lltic a , 1 7 9 ,1 8 0
Ju stic ia lis t P a rty , 1 7 7 ,1 7 8 ^ , 1 8 0,181, m e ta l w o rk e rs , 4 ,6 4 ,7 0 - 1 ,7 2 ,7 8 , 1 1 4 ,
1 9 7 .1 0 3 1 1 5 ,1 17-10passim, 1 2 3 ,1 2 4 ,1 2 6 ,
1 3 8 ,1 4 0 ,1 4 8 ,1 4 9 ,1 6 1 -3 passim, 165,
K rie g e r V asen a, A d e lb e rt, 2 1 7 -1 8 , 221, 1 6 6 ,1 6 8 ,1 7 1 - 2 ,1 8 4 ,1 9 0 - 1 ,1 9 4 ,1 9 8 ,
2 2 3 ,2 2 6 ,2 3 6 2 1 5 ,2 1 9 ,2 2 4 ,2 4 5
see also C h a m b e r o f M e ta l W o rk e rs ,
L a F a ld a ,9 5 F e d e ra c iö n A rg e n tin a d e la In d u s tr ia
L a P la ta , 221 M e ta lu rg ic a , U n io n O b r e r a
L a b a y ra , G e n e ra l, 145 M e ta lu rg ic a ( U O M )
la b o u r c o n tra c ts , 1 3 9 -4 0 ,1 4 2 ,2 2 4 -5 M ich e ls , R o b e r t, 2 5 1 ,2 5 7
L a b o u r D a y , 3 5 -6 M ig u el, L o r e n z o , 242
la b o u r law , 38 m o n o p o lie s , 1 8 8 ,1 8 9
L a b o u r P a rty , see P a rtid o L a b o ris ta M o n te r a , G e n e ra l T o r a n z o , 1 1 6 ,1 5 1 -2
L aclau , E r n e s to , 96 M o n to n e r o s , 2 3 8 ,2 4 2 ,2 4 4
L a n u sse , G e n e ra l A lle ja n d ro , 2 3 4 ,2 3 6 -9 M o v im ie n to R e v o lu c io n a rio P e ro n is ta
passim (M R P ), 2 0 6 -7
L a p la c ette, C a p ta in P a tro n , 5 5 ,6 1 ,7 5 M o y a , B e n ito , 148
la tifu n d io s , 188 M U C S , 163
L a w o f P ro fe ss io n a l A ss o c ia tio n s (L aw 14, m u n ic ip a l w o rk e rs , 75
4 55), 1 0 ,1 0 5 ,1 0 6 ,1 1 3 ,1 3 0 ,1 3 1 ,
1 66-8 passim, 1 7 0 ,1 7 3 ,1 7 4 ,1 9 3 ,2 4 5 N a n c la re s , E n r iq u e C o rv a la n , 181
le a th e r c u tte rs , 204 N a ta li n i, L u is, 4 4 ,4 6
L e fo r t, C la u d e , 259 N a tio n a l A g re e m e n t o n P r o d u c tiv ity , 60
L e v in g s to n , G e n e ra l, 2 3 3 ,2 3 6 n a tio n a lis a tio n , 1 8 8 ,1 8 9
lib e ra lism , 1 6 ,1 7 n a tio n a lis m , 2 2 ,4 8 ,1 0 8 ,1 0 9 ,1 1 6 ,2 6 0 ,
lig h t a n d p o w e r w o rk e rs , 1 8 1 ,1 9 1 ,1 9 2 , 262
1 9 7 ,2 1 5 ,2 2 2 ,2 2 7 ,2 2 8 ,2 3 4 ,2 3 5 ,2 4 5 see also C a th o lic n a tio n a lists
Linea Dura, 1 0 4 ,1 0 6 ,1 3 3 ,1 3 4 ,1 5 5 ,1 6 3 , n av al c o n s tr u c tio n w o rk e rs , 204
2 0 4 -8 passim, 2 1 0 ,2 1 1 ,2 4 0 ,2 5 2 n e o -c o rp o ra tis m , 2 0 1 -3 ,2 2 0
L i s a n d r o d e la T o r r e , 6 4 ,7 3 ,1 1 3 ,1 1 5 ,1 1 8 , N ie m b r o , P a u lin o , 1 5 4 ,1 6 5 -6 ,1 7 9 ,1 9 0
1 2 9 ,2 0 7 ,2 6 2 N u e v a C o rrie n te d e O p in io n , 219
L o h o la b e rr y , J u a n C a rlo s , 90
L o m as d e Z a m o ra , 93 O lm o s , A m a d o , 7 2 ,1 1 7 ,1 5 4 ,1 5 5 ,1 9 5 - 7
L o n a rd i, E d u a rd o , 4 3 - 9 passim, 5 2 -4 passim, 202
passim O n g a n ia , G e n e ra l J u a n C a r lo s , 202,
L u n a , F elix , 3 2 ,3 3 n ^ -i\ passim, 2 2 3 ,2 2 5 ,2 3 3 ,2 3 5 - 6 ,
L u z y F u e rz a , 113 2}7~9passim, 255
O n g a r o , R a im u n d o , 219
M a d r id , 184 O p e ra c iö n R e t o m o , 178
M a fu d , J u lio , 17
M a o T s e - tu n g , 147 p a c k in g w o rk e rs , 114
M a r d e l P la ta , 1 4 5 ,1 4 8 ,1 7 0 Pacto Social, 2 4 4 -6 passim, 248
M a rx ism , 2 ,2 3 3 ,2 3 4 Palabra Argentina, 89
M a ta d e ro s , 115 P a la c io s, A lfre d o , 152
M a te ra , R a u l, 176 D i P a ro d i, D e lia , 1 7 7 ,1 7 9
matones, 163 P a rtid o J u stic ia lis ta , 154
M a tti, J u a n a , 177 P a rtid o L a b o ris ta , 1 1 ,1 5 ,1 7 ,3 6 ,1 5 4 ,1 5 6 ,
Mayoria, 119 196
m e a tp a c k in g w o rk e rs , 4 4 ,4 7 ,6 4 ,6 5 ,7 2 , P a rtid o P e ro n is ta , 7 5 ,1 5 2 ,1 5 6
Index 2 9 9
P A S A , 2 26 see also C o n g re ss o f P ro d u c tiv ity ,

D i P a scu a le , J o rg e , 122, 133, 154-6 N a tio n a l A g re e m e n t o n P ro d u c tiv ity ,
passim, 1 6 3 ,2 0 4 ,2 1 0 ,2 5 7 P ro g ra m m e o f H u e r ta G ra n d e , 207
p a s ta m a k e rs , 72 P u e n te , D r G a lile o , 120, 135, 139
P e re lm a n , A n g e l, 2 6 ,2 8 P u e rto G e n e ra l San M a rtin , 89
P é re z , F ra n c is c o , 181
P e r ö n E v ita , 7 ,1 8 - 1 9 ,3 1 ,9 5 ,1 4 9 ,1 5 6 , Q ué , 107
206 Q u ilje n a , A m e ric o , 121
P e r ö n , Is a b e l, 1 8 0 ,1 8 1 ,1 9 7 ,2 4 5 ,2 4 6 , Q u ilm e s , 172
2 4 7 -8
P e r ö n , J u a n D o m in g o , 7 ,9 ,1 1 ,1 6 ,1 8 - 2 4 R acch in i, J u a n , 133
passim, 3 2 -5 passim, 3 8 ,3 9 ,4 3 ,4 8 , R ad ica l P a rty , 1 4 ,1 5 ,2 0 ,4 4 ,1 0 6 - 7 , *65,
50» 57» 59» 60, 6 6 ,7 2 ,7 5 ,8 0 ,8 1 ,8 3 , 1 7 9 ,2 3 7 ,2 4 4
85 -fpassim, 8 8 -9 0 passim, 9 3 ,9 5 ,9 6 , ra d ic a lism , 1 7 -1 8 ,2 1 ,4 7
9 8 - 9 , 1 0 4 , 105-9passim, i i 2,'122, ra d ic a ls, 1 2 ,4 5 ,4 7 ,6 2 ,1 0 3 ,1 7 5 ,2 3 7 ,2 4 1
1 2 7 ,1 2 9 -3 3 passim, 1 3 2 ,1 4 4 ,1 4 5 , ra ilro a d w o rk e rs , 4 4 ,7 5 ,7 7 ,7 8 ,1 6 6 ,2 1 9
1 5 0 -4 passim, 1 5 6 ,1 6 1 ,1 6 4 ,1 6 6 ,1 7 0 , R a m o s, M ejia, 78
1 7 6 -8 passimy iio-2 passim, 18 4 -6 ra tio n a lis a tio n , 13 5 -9 ,1 4 1 -3 passim, 151,
passim, 1 9 1 ,1 9 7 ,2 0 2 ,2 0 3 ,2 0 5 -1 0 2 1 7 -1 8 ,2 2 6 ,2 3 0 ,2 5 3 ,2 5 7 ,2 5 8
passim, 2 1 6 , 156-46 passim, 249, R e a l,J u a n J o s é , 108
2 5 4 - 5 ,2 6 1 ,2 6 3 ,2 6 4 R e a rte , G u s ta v o , 2 0 7 ,2 1 0
P e ro n is m o d e B ase, 240 re c essio n , 7
P e r o n is m o C o m b a tiv o , 240 Recuperaciôn, 153
P e r o n is m o d e A c c iö n R e v o lu c io n a ria , 205 R eg a, L o p e z , 248
P e r o n is t id e o lo g y , see id e o lo g y R e p e z z a , M a rc e lo , 205
P e r o n is t le ft, 3 ,2 0 7 - 9 passim R e sista n ce , 5 1 ,6 1 ,7 6 - 7 ,7 9 - 8 0 ,8 4 ,8 5 ,
P e r o n is t P a r ty , see P a rtid o P e ro n is ta 8 8 -9 1 passim, 95-jpassim, 100, h i ,
P e r o n is t y o u th m o v e m e n t, 3 ,2 4 2 ,2 5 0 1 1 6 ,11 8 , 121-4passim, 1 2 7 ,1 2 9 ,1 4 1 ,
personeria, 1 7 3 ,1 7 4 1 4 4 ,1 4 5 ,1 4 7 ,148-9» 1 5 0 ,1 5 6 ,1 8 7 ,
p e tr o le u m w o rk e rs , 44 , 121, 167, 192, 197, 1 9 6 , 204-6 passim, 2 0 8 ,2 1 1 ,2 1 6 ,2 2 9 ,
199 2 5 8 ,2 5 9 ,2 6 1 ,2 6 4
p h a rm a c y w o rk e rs , 2 0 4 ,2 19 Revolucion Argentina, 2 1 7 ,2 2 1 ,2 3 3 ,2 3 5 ,
P ic h e l, M a n u e l, 17 2 3 6 ,2 4 0 ,2 6 0
d i P ie tr o , H u g o , 4 3 ,5 0 Revolucion Libertadora, 4 3 ,4 5 ,6 6
P in e d a , H ild a , 177 R ey e s, C ip ria n o , 25 -
Plan Conintes (Conmocion Interna del rh e to ric , P e ro n is t, 2 1 - 4 ,3 0 - 1 ,3 5 ,3 7 - 8 ,
Estado), 1 2 0 ,1 2 2 ,1 4 4 , 145-ypassim, 5 9 ,9 0 ,1 0 0
Mi Rodrigazo, 248
PlandeLucha, 1 6 5 ,1 8 2 -3 ,1 8 9 ,1 9 3 ,2 0 3 , R o d rig o , C e le s tin o , 248
2 2 4 ,2 5 4 R o ja s, Isaac, 54
P la n o f S tru g g le , 2 1 8 ,2 2 0 R o m e ro , A d e lin o , 242 •
Plan Pinedo, 20 R o o se v e lt, F ra n k lin D e la n o , 39
Plenario Nacional de Sindicatos R o s a rio , 2 9 ,5 0 - 1 ,5 3 , 6i~4passim, 7 3 ,8 7 ,
Combativos, Grupos Clasistas, 8 9 , 9 7 , 11 5 ,11 7 ,1 1 8 ,1 2 1 ,1 2 9 ,1 4 6 -7 ,
Obreros Revolucionarios, 235 1 6 8 ,2 0 4 ,2 2 1 ,2 2 3
p o lic e , 4 9 , 6 1 , 11 4 ,1 4 6 ,2 2 1 ,2 2 2 ru b b e r w o rk e rs , 154
p o r t w o r k e r s , 154 ,2 1 8 R u cc i, J o sé , 8 9 ,9 0 ,2 4 0
p o w e r w o r k e r s , see lig h t a n d p o w e r
w o rk e rs sa b o ta g e , 7 7 - 9 ,8 1 ,8 2 ,9 1 ,1 4 3 ,145-6» M 7
P r e b is c h P la n , 48 S aenz P e n a L a w , 15
P r ie to , E lo y , 144 Salam an ca, R en é , 234
p r in t w o r k e r s , 75 S a n a to rio P rim e ra J u n ta , 169-70
p r o d u c tiv ity , 7 - 8 ,5 6 - 7 ,6 1 ,6 3 ,1 1 0 , S a rtre , J e a n -P a u l, 3 0 ,2 4 9 ,2 5 6 ,2 5 7
1 3 7 - 8 , 1 3 9 » MO» M 2 , 1 4 3 , 1*4 S e c o n d F iv e -Y e a r P la n , 56
3 0 0 Index
Semana de Protesta, 1 6 5 ,1 8 2 ,1 8 9 T o s c o , A g u stfn , 2 2 8 ,2 2 9 ,2 3 1 ,2 3 4 ,2 3 5

s h o p w o rk e rs , 75 T u c u m a n , 1 6 8 ,2 1 9
Sigal, Sylvia, 37
S in d ica to d e M ecan ico s y A n n e s del U n io n C iv ic a R ad ica l In tra n s ig e n te
T r a n s p o rte A u to m o to r (S M A T A ), ( U C R I), 1 4 ,1 0 7 ,1 5 2 ,1 5 3
2 2 4 ,2 2 6 ,2 2 7 ,2 3 0 ,2 3 4 ,2 4 5 U n io n d e G u e rrille ro s A n d in o s (U G A ),
sindicato ünico, 166 M9
S in d ica to U n id o d e P e tro le ro s d e l E s ta d o U n io n D e m o c ra tic a , 1 2 ,1 6
(S U P E ), 103,104 U n io n F e rro v ia ria , 7 5 ,2 1 9
S in d ica to U n id o P o r tu a r io s A rg e n tin o s U n io n O b r e r a M e ta lü rg ic a (U O M ) , 44,
(S U P A ), 218 1 2 6 ,1 3 9 ,1 4 8 ,1 4 9 ,1 5 4 ,1 5 6 ,1 6 1 ,1 6 6 ,
62 O rg a n is a tio n s , 7 5 ,7 6 ,8 6 ,8 7 ,9 5 ,1 0 3 , 1 7 0 ,1 7 7 ,1 8 4 ,1 9 0 ,2 2 4 ,2 2 7 ,2 2 9
1 0 4 -5 , u y -i 5passim, 117,1 2 0,122, see also C h a m b e r o f M e ta l-W o r k in g
1 2 5 ,1 2 8 - 9 ,13 0 -3 passim, 15 1, 154, In d u s trie s , F e d e ra c iö n A rg e n tin a d e
1 5 6 ,1 6 2 -j passim, 176-8 passim, 180, la In d u s tria M e ta lü rg ic a , m e ta l
1 8 1 ,1 8 7 ,1 8 8 ,1 9 0 ,2 0 3 ,2 0 4 w o rk e rs
62 O r g a n is a tio n s depie junto a Perôn, U n io n P o p u la r, 1 5 4 ,1 6 5 ,1 7 9
1 8 1 ,2 0 7 U n io n S in d ical A rg e n tin a (U S A ), 8
Soberania, 84 U n ite d K in g d o m , 7 ,1 9
so cial serv ices, see w elfa re U n ite d S û te s o f A m e ric a , 19 ,2 5 2
so cialism , 2 - 3 ,4 7 ,2 0 9 ,2 3 1 ,2 5 9 u n iv e rs itie s, 2 2 0,221
S o cialist P a rty , 2 4 ,3 7 ,4 4 ,5 5 ,6 1 ,6 7 ,1 5 2 U ra n g a , G e n e ra l, 80
so cialists, 1 2 ,2 0 ,2 8 ,4 5 ,4 7 ,6 2 ,6 6 - 8
passim, 75 V alle, G e n e ra l, 8 0 ,8 2 ,1 4 7
Sociedad Rural, 20 V a n d o r, A u g u s to , 4 ,7 2 ,1 0 5 ,1 1 4 ,1 2 1 ,
S o la n o L im a, V ic en te, 1 6 5 ,1 7 7 ,2 0 6 1 2 3 ,1 2 6 ,1 2 7 ,1 4 8 ,1 4 9 ,1 5 5 ,1 5 6 - 7 ,
S o rian o , O s v a ld o , 264 i6i-}passim, 1 6 5 ,1 6 6 ,1 7 0 ,1 7 6 ,
S osa, R u b e n , 177 1 7 8 -8 0 passim, 1 8 4 ,1 8 5 ,1 9 4 ,1 9 6 ,
S p an ish R ep u b lic a n s , 28 2 0 3 ,2 0 4 ,2 0 7 ,2 1 5 -1 7 passim, 219,
strik e s, 4 7 ,5 0 -4 passim, 67,6 9 ,7 0 ,7 2 ,7 4 , 2 2 0 ,2 3 9 ,2 4 0 ,2 5 0 ,2 5 1 ,2 5 4
7 6 ,8 1 - 3 passim, 8 6 ,8 8 ,8 9 ,9 1 ,1 0 3 -5 V a n d o ris m , 1 9 4 -7 ,2 0 2 ,2 0 4 ,2 2 9 ,2 3 9 ,
passim, i n , wy-10 passim, 12 4 -6 2 5 0 ,2 5 3 -5 passim
passim, 1 2 9 ,1 3 6 ,1 4 0 ,1 4 6 ,1 4 7 -8 , Vandorismo, 162
15 1 , 1 5 5 ,1 6 5 ,1 8 9 ,2 1 8 ,2 2 0 -2 passim, V a z q u e z , J o s é , 1 2 4 ,2 5 7
2 2 8 ,2 4 8 verticalismo, 245
su g a r w o rk e rs , 219 Viborazo, 2 2 9 ,2 3 6 ,2 3 7
s y n d ica lists, 2 8 ,4 5 ,6 2 V iel, D a n te , 44
V ig o , J u a n M „ 5 3 ,7 8 ,8 0 ,8 1
T a c c o n e , J u a n J o s é , 191 V illa L u g a n o , 114,115
ta n g o , 2 3 ,2 6 - 7 V illa L u r o , 114,115
T e d e sc o , M a ria n o , 7 ,1 7 V illa M a rte lli, 79
te le p h o n e w o rk e rs , 2 0 4 ,2 1 9 V illa flo r, R a im u n d o , 7 0 - 1 ,1 2 0 ,1 2 5 ,1 2 6 ,
te x tile w o rk e rs , 1 7 ,4 4 ,5 5 ,6 5 ,7 3 ,7 8 ,9 0 , *57
1 1 3 ,1 1 5 ,1 1 8 -2 0 passim, 1 2 7 ,1 3 6 -8 V illa flo r, R o la n d o , 12 5
passim, 1 4 1 ,1 4 2 ,1 6 3 ,1 6 5 ,1 6 6 ,1 6 8 , V illa lö n , H e c to r , 177
1 7 2 ,1 9 2 ,2 0 4 ,2 1 9
see also F e d e ra c iö n de la In d u s tria w ag es, 8 ,1 0 ,1 1 ,2 5 ,5 4 ,5 7 ,5 8 ,6 1 ,6 2 - 3 ,
T e x til A rg e n tin a (F IT A ), g a rm e n t 6 6 ,6 8 - 7 0 passim, 8 8 ,1 1 0 ,1 1 6 ,1 2 9 ,
w o rk e rs 1 3 9 ,1 4 1 ,1 4 3 ,1 6 5 ,1 7 4 ,1 8 2 ,1 9 2 ,
T h ir d W o rld lib e ra tio n , 2 4 9 -5 1 passim 2 1 7 - 1 8 ,2 1 9 ,2 2 2 , 114-6 passim,
32 D e m o c r a tic O rg a n is a tio n s , 7 6 ,1 1 4 ,1 6 3 9
* 3 0 - 1 » i } , 1 4 4 » 1 4 6 ,2 5 2 ,2 5 4 ,2 5 7 ,
to b a c c o w o rk e rs , 196 258, 263
T o lo sa , E u s ta q u io , 154 W a lsh , R o d o lfo , 1 2 5 ,2 5 0
T o r r e , J u a n C a rlo s , 3 7 ,2 5 6 W e b e r, M ax , 2 5 1 ,2 5 7
Index 3 0 1
w e lfa re , 1 1 ,2 5 ,3&> 57» S&» 9°» 9$, 168, 6 1 ,6 3 ,6 6 ,6 7 ,8 8 ,1 3 9 ,1 4 1 ,1 9 2 ,

1 6 9 ,1 8 8 ,1 9 1 ,2 0 2 ,2 2 4 ,2 3 7 ,2 5 2 2 2 5 -6 ,2 3 0 -1 ,2 4 5 ,2 5 3 ,2 5 4 ,2 5 6
w e lfa re s ta te c a p ita lism , 39 W rig h t M ills, C ., 2 5 2 ,2 5 4
W illia m s , R a y m o n d , 9 4 ,9 7 ,2 6 1
w o r k in g class, see class Y P F 105 ,1 0 7
w o r k in g c o n d itio n s , 2 5 - 6 ,2 9 - 3 0 ,5 7 ,5 9 , Y rig o y e n , H ip o lito , 1 4 ,1 9 ,3 1
CAMBRIDGE LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES
3 Peter Calvert. The Mexican Revolution 1910-1914: The Diplomacy of

Anglo-American Conflict
8 Celso Furtado. Economic Development of Latin America: Historical Back
ground and Contemporary Problems
10 D. A. Brading. Miners and Merchants in Bourbon Mexico, 1763-1810
15 P. J. Bakewell. Silver Mining and Society in Colonial Mexico, Zacatecas
1364-1700
22 James Lockhart and Enrique Otté. Letters and People of the Spanish
Indies: The Sixteenth Century
24 Jean A. Meyer. The Cristero Rebellion: The Mexican People between
Church and State 1926-1929
31 Charles F. Nunn. Foreign Immigrants in Early Bourbon Mexico, 1700-1760
32 D. A. Brading. Haciendas and Ranchos in the Mexican Bajio
34 David Nicholls. From Dessalines to Duvalier: Race, Colour and National
Independence in Haiti.
35 Jonathan C. Brown. A Socioeconomic History of Argentina, 1776-1860
36 Marco Palacios. Coffee in Colombia, 1830-1970: An Economic, Social and
Political History
37 David Murray. Odious Commerce: Britain, Spain and the Abolition of the
Cuban Slave Trade
38 D. A. Brading. Caudillo and Peasant in the Mexican Revolution.
39 Joe Foweraker. The Struggle for Land: A Political Economy of the Pioneer
Frontier in Brazil from 1930 to the Present Day
40 George Philip. Oil and Politics in Latin America: Nationalist Movements
and State Companies
41 Noble David Cook. Demographic Collapse: Indian Peru, 1320-1620
42 Gilbert M. Joseph. Revolution from Without: Yucatan, and the United
States, 1880-1924
43 B. S. McBeth. Juan Vicente Gomez and the Oil Companies in Venezuela,
1908-1933
44 J. A. Offner. Law and Politics in Aztec Texcoco
45 Thomas J. Trebat. Brazil's State-Owned Enterprises: A Case Study o f the
State as Entrepreneur
46 James Lockhart and Stuart B. Schwanz. Early Latin America: A History of
Colonial Spanish America and Brazil
47 Adolfo Figueroa. Capitalist Development and the Peasant Economy in Peru
48 Norman Long and Bryan Roberts. Miners, Peasants and Entrepreneurs:
Regional Development in the Central Highlands of Peru
49 Ian Roxborough. Unions and Politics in Mexico: The Case of the Auto
mobile Industry
50 Alan Gilbert and Peter Ward. Housing, the State and the Poor: Policy and
Practice in Three Latin American Cities
51 Jean Stubbs. Tobacco on the Periphery: A Case Study in Cuban Labour
History, 1860-1938
3 0 2
Cambridge Latin American Studies 3 0 3
$2 Stuart B. Schwartz. Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society:

Bahiat 1550-1855
53 Richard J. Walter. The Province of Buenos Aires and Argentine Politics,
79/2-/94;
54 Alan Knight. The Mexican Revolution, vol. 1: Porfirians, Liberals and
Peasants
55 Alan Knight. The. Mexican Revolution, vol. 2: Counter-revolution and
Reconstruction
56 P. Michael McKinley. Pre-revolutionary Caracas: Politics, Economy and
Society, 1777-1811
57 Adriaan C. van Oss. Catholic Colonialism: A Parish History of Guatemala,
1524-1821
58 Leon Zamosc. 7 V?e Agrarian Question and the Peasant Movement in Col
ombia: Struggles of the National Peasant Association, 1967-1981
59 Brian R. Hamnett. Roots of Insurgency: Mexican Regions, 1750-1824
60 Manuel Caballero. Latin America ana the Comintern, 1919-1945
61 Inga Clendinnen. Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan}
61 Jeffrey D. Needell. A Tropical Belle Epoque: Elite Culture and Society in

Tum-of-the-century Rio de Janeiro
63 Victor Bulmer-Thomas. The Political Economy of Central America since
1920
64 Daniel James. Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine
Working Class, 1946-1976
65 Bill Albert. South America and the First World War: The Impact of the War
on Brazil, Argentina, Peru and Chile
66 Jonathan Hartlyn. The Politics of Coalition Rule in Colombia
67 Charles H. Wood and José Alberto Magno de Carvalho. The Demography
o f Inequality in Brazil

James 1994 Resistance and Integration

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

James 1994 Resistance and Integration

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

James 1994 Resistance and Integration

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

CA M BRID G E L A TIN AM ERICA N STUDIES

In memory of Bryn Morgan,

and Daniel Hopen,

© Cambridge University Press 1988

First published 1988

Printed in the United States of America

Library o f Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

A catolog record fo r this book is available fro m the British Library.

ISBN 0-521-34635-5 hardback

Acknowledgements page vii

Part One The background 5

P art Two The Peronist Resistance, 1955-8 41

Part Three Frondizi and integration: temptation and

Part Four The Vandor era, 1962-^ 159

Peronism and the working class,

Organised labour and the Peronist state

Workers and the political appeal of Peronism

Workers as citizens in Peronist political rhetoric

discourse was no longer conceivable, as it had been prior to 1943, at the

A believable vision: credibility and concreteness in Perôn's political

The meaning o f the ‘década infame *: working-class responses

Private experience and public discourse

The limits o f heresy: the ambivalence o f Peronism*s social legacy

The Peronist Resistance, 1955-8

The survival of Peronism:

The unofficial committee presented itself to Captain Tropea, the inter-

‘N i vencedores, ni vencidos’: the Lonardi interregnum

government/union understanding seemed promising. A number of

In order to understand the developments of the seven weeks following

overplayed their hand and misunderstood the delicate tightrope that

Aramburu and the working class: first elements of a policy

Rationalisation and repression on the shop floor: the R evolution

Harassment within the unions was common, too. Local overseers

In a similar fashion the safeguards contained in contracts in terms of

The organisation of the Resistance in the factories

These semi-clandestine groupings, often meeting in private houses,

likely to find the task of largely clandestine reorganisation more diffi­

Socialists and communists in the Aramburu era

ation with a paternalistic and undemocratic government. This led in

While the communists shared many of the same basic attitudes

The wages struggle during the Aramburu government

ment control by the Peronist regime. The wage committees which

the metal workers’ delegate committee in Avellaneda, described years

Commandos and unions :

We didn’t have arms, we couldn’t speak, nor vote, nor do anything.

Old and new union leaders

themselves as temporary replacements until the former leaders could

The Intersindical and the 62 Organisations

Sabotage and clandestine groups

The breadth of the warning was an indication of the range of actions

Divergence in the Resistance

Much of the tension was unspoken, particularly in 1956 when the

Ideology and consciousness

The reaffirmation of traditional tenets

formal discourse of Peronism in power. First, there is a strongly voiced

Working-class Peronists associated the pre-1955 era with a time of

elements present in this discourse, fragments of what one author has

A corollary to this political scepticism was an affirmation and pride

Formal ideology and practical consciousness

of these alternative interpretations within Peronism can be found in the

likely to find the task of largely clandestine reorganisation more diffi

The national committee of the 62 pressured my union to withdraw my creden

ference reaffirmed ‘its will to promote the immediate institutionalisa

This emphasis on the enterprise as a community of interests was con